2023 Horror Part Twenty-One

STRANGE DARLING

Dir - JT Mollner
Overall: MEH

For his sophomore full length Strange Darling, writer/director JT Mollner props up its gimmicks and clever subversion at the cost of properly exploring its subject matter.  In and of itself, this is not an automatic faux pas since there is nothing wrong with a movie that has nothing to say, especially if it is edge-of-your-seat paced and stylized to the gills.  Such is the case here as Mollner announces right off the bat that his new film was shot in 35 mm, (by known actor and first time cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi no less), is based off of a "real" serial killer, and is told in six chapters, (actually seven counting an epilogue), and then starts right in the middle with chapter three.  Every nuance to the presentation is calculated, from casting the perpetually brooding Kyle Gallner and giving his character the name "The Demon", to opening with a chase scene where he is sniffing coke, shooting a shotgun, and trying to catch up with an injured and panicked Willa Fitzgerald in an ancient Ford Pinto.  Details cannot be divulged without ruining the fun twists, but those twists are clouded by our two underwritten leads who only seem to be behaving in a way so that the audience gasps at the rug pull.  In other words, we need more information to get somewhere here.  Instead, this is a sly, violent, darkly comedic, wonderfully shot and performed whirlwind of gender dynamics played against each other, but Mollner stops short of digging into the can of worms that he opens.

 

THE VOURDALAK

Dir - Adrien Beau
Overall: GOOD

 

Shot on 16 mm, the full-length debut from French filmmaker Adrien Beau is a delightfully dour yet stylishly humorous adaptation of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak, which genre fans will recognize as having been brought to the screen fifty years earlier in Mario Bava's famed anthology movie Black Sabbath.  The Vourdalak, (Le Vourdalak), takes its cue from such bygone gothic cinematic haunts out of England and Europe, but it has a singular aura that differentiates it from your typical unimaginative throwback.  The tone curiously rides a line between absurd and melancholic as a dainty courier of the King of France finds himself ambushed in the Eastern Europe countryside, only to come across a doomed family whose patriarch has recently returned as a member of the undead.  Along with the retro aesthetic, the fact that said patriarch is not played by a living organism gives the movie another gimmick, but Beau, (who also provides the voice for it), manages to make the title creature both alarmingly freaky and hilarious.  There are some pacing lulls that rear their head in the third act, but the grimy and haunting atmosphere remains in check, making this a left-of-center work to take note of.
 

RAGING GRACE
Dir - Paris Zarcilla
Overall: MEH

A frustrating yet well-intended debut from director Paris Zarcilla, Raging Grace is a relentlessly miserable watch that hinges its momentum at least in part on implausibility and tired genre tropes.  Little Jaeden Paige Boadilla delivers an agreeable performance as an ignored child who endlessly jump scares Max Eigenmann, much to the annoyance of both her and the audience.  Wide-mouthed/white-eyed screaming ghouls and a few bog-standard nightmare sequences also show up, with none of the horror bits coming off as anything within miles of unique.  The problems are not limited to unfortunate genre hacks though since the story takes a sincere look at abused immigrants who are at the mercy of their manipulative employers, but watching Eigenmann's harrowing ordeal where every break proves itself to be yet another humiliating trap is borderline insufferable.  This is intentional of course since we are meant to understand the horrendous trials and tribulations that foreign workers, (particularly single mothers), all to often have to withstand, but several of the plot maneuvers that get Eigenmann from point A to point B will have audience member's yelling at the screen due to how poorly thought out they are on the character's part.  Zarcilla can be commended for celebrating his Filipino heritage and shining a light on something that needs to be addressed, but the subject matter deserves a tighter script and less stupid jump scares.

2023 Horror Part Twenty

MIND BODY SPIRIT
Dir - Alex Henes/Matthew Merenda
Overall: WOOF

 

A frustrating full-length debut from the writer/director team of Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda, Mind Body Spirit has a nifty gimmick that is ripe for tearing faux-enlightenment influencer culture a new asshole, but it indulges in the biggest found footage no-nos along its clunky path.  On the one hand, it seems unavoidable for Henes and Merenda to utilize any other format than the found footage one since this is a story about a troubled young woman who embarks on an online journal, documenting her "journey" after inheriting her weird grandmother's old house.  Yet by going this route, the filmmakers set themselves up for an endless stream of moments that take the viewer right out of the proceedings.  This includes the use of scary music, ambient sound effects, those obnoxiously blaring noise swells that contemporary horror movies seem required by law to include, and the camera being turned on any time that the audience needs to see something scary, plausibility be damned.  Despite its subject matter which is predicated exclusively on Sarah J. Bartholomew recording herself, (except for a tag at the end), it is all edited and structured like a conventional film, plus the plot is too hackneyed with its vague occult tropes to pass Alfred Hitchcock's icebox test.  And for fuck's sake, can we finally stop with the characters opening their mouths and screaming into the camera gag please?

 

STARVE ACRE
Dir - Daniel Kokotajlo
Overall: MEH

For his second full-length, British filmmaker Daniel Kokotailo adapts Andrew Michael Hurley's novel Starve Acre, which serves as a more lackluster and cold variant to Valdimar Jóhannsson's singularly strange Lamb from 2021.  Set in the 1970s, it has a couple losing their child in the first act, (a weird kid who exhibits anti-social behavior like murdering a horse and having an imaginary friend of sorts whisper unwholesome things in his ear, or so he claims), who then embark on less than agreeable coping mechanisms in their ensuing grief.  The tone is humorless and deliberately uninviting as we are never allowed to connect with Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark's aloof characters, instead just witnessing their behavior as spectators like they are some unknowing experiment to supernatural manipulation.  One has to stretch to come to such a conclusion though since the otherworldly elements are murky at best, plus the pacing suffers because of both this and the dour atmosphere that is not helped by persistent music from Matthew Herbert.  This would work if the film had a more engrossing and underlying mystery, but it is more lackadaisical and unclear than spooky, with the curious elements spread out so gingerly as to almost be indecipherable.

SLEEP
Dir - Jason Yu
Overall: GOOD

The debut Sleep from Bong Joon-ho collaborator Jason Yu rides a thin line throughout its three chapters, chronicling the psychological turmoil suffered by a devoted couple who is both expecting their first child and dealing with the fact that one of them is a violent sleepwalker.  On paper, this is nothing new, as the horror genre has long presented its characters in vague enough lighting to put their paranoia in the perspective where what we are witnessing could be of supernatural origin or merely the unreliable outcome of a mental breakdown.  Yu does remarkable things with this set-up though, which is down to the details by which he allows us to immerse ourselves with the characters played by Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun, (the latter sadly delivering one of his last performances before his untimely suicide the following year).  They are relatable, likeable, and seem to have a warm relationship where the honeymoon phase has yet to pass.  This both builds a solid footing for their sticking together when things get impossible and it makes their harrowing ordeal shift the earlier comedic focus into a well-earned darker tone towards the finale.  Every step of the way, we are left to ponder exactly who was crazy and who was just playing along to keep the family together, but as the characters themselves allude to, it ultimately does not matter.  So long as "it's over", they can live to fight other battles that life throws at them.

2023 Horror Part Nineteen

INFESTED
Dir - Sébastien Vaniček
Overall: GOOD

 

While most spider movies are comedic in nature, (think Arachnophobia and Eight Legged Freaks), we occasionally get some that take their creepy-crawly premise more seriously, and the full-length debut Infested, (Vermines), from French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček is just such a movie.  That said, the hip-hop heavy soundtrack and playful bickering amongst the young cast cast at least initially gives it a lighter tone, but this is done away with quick once everyone is quarantined to a lower income apartment building and the downtrodden are forced to fend for themselves with mostly tragic results.  Vaniček proves to be a natural at delivering intense set pieces that are more white-knuckled than merely skin-crawling.  This is a scenario where things cannot get any worse yet they keep getting worse, forcing some well-rounded characters to face their own hang-ups and internal issues to the point where it becomes a harrowing ordeal for the audience as well.  It may get too overbearing for some tastes and a few select CGI creature scenes are poorly done, but this is mostly a success that takes an age old and universally unsettling premise of killer arachnids and does something more grown-up with it.

 

PROJECT EERIE

Dir - Ricky Umberger

Overall: MEH

Thankfully stepping away from his consistently flawed and silly The Fear Footage series, indie filmmaker Ricky Umberger starts what may be a new crop of found footage movies with Project Eerie.  It follows the same formula as the aforementioned Fear Footage debut, (as well as every V/H/S installment for that matter), namely introducing a wrap-around narrative that presents an excuse for people to watch a couple of vignettes that all tie into unexplained terrain.  The usual found footage motifs are present, (namely flimsy excuses for characters to be filming everything and pointing the camera at things to create a cinematic aesthetic), plus predictable scare tactics run throughout.  Umberger makes no attempt to reinvent the wheel here; instead, he seems to be honing in his craft at strictly adhering to the ever-growing number of shaky-cam horror films that are of such an ilk.  Everything here has been done before, (sometimes better and sometimes worse), but there is still an agreeable amount of enthusiasm that cuts through on screen.  Even if the scary, screechy monster faces still lurch at the camera and look like store-bought masks, some of the production values are improved upon, so at least Umberger is making a noble attempt to up his game while staying in his stylistic and micro-budgeted comfort zone.

 

THE KING TIDE

Dir - Christian Sparkes

Overall: MEH

 

Boasting a unique premise, Canadian filmmaker Christian Sparkes' The King Tide unfortunately never engrosses the way that it should.  Set at an isolated island community that has adopted a Neo-Luddite lifestyle, it throws a monkey wrench into such an "off the grid" existence where a mysterious infant washes ashore and becomes the focal point of their society.  The child does this by having all manner of healing powers, as well as the ability to draw loads of fish in so that the handful of townsfolk can remain unreliant on outside assistance.  Things go smoothly until they do not, when little Alix West Lefler's otherworldly abilities fail to work as planned, causing an immediate sense of panic where the entire structure of the commune has to struggle to cope with the downfall of an existence that they have carved out for themselves.  A case of putting all of one's eggs in a single basket, it explores what happens to people when that basket is taken away and the results take a consistently dour trajectory.  Well acted and well shot, the plot specifics seem arbitrarily placed in order to extenuate the story's themes, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the hooks are not hooky enough and the melancholic tone becomes too overbearing after awhile.

2022 Horror Part Twenty-Seven

BLOOD RELATIVES
Dir - Noah Segan
Overall: GOOD

 

For his full-length debut, actor/director/writer Noah Segan throws his hat in to the vast vampire romp ring with Blood Relatives, a movie that is harmless and no better or worse than the other eight-hundred million movies that take the piss out of blood-suckers.  The film plays out in the guise of a father and daughter-bonding road movie, and because there are also plenty of those, it does not leave anywhere inventive for things to go.  Thankfully, this is not as much of a detriment as it should be due to the likeability of Segan's Jewish, mild-mannered undead protagonist and his relatable, sassy teenage daughter, (played by Victoria Moroles), who barges into his life with her own level of awkwardness and frustration over their struggling partnership.  The details can be spotted from previous sources left and right, but the combination of R-rated and cutesy charm helps even the various gags that fail to land.  The whole thing gets in and out in just under ninety minutes without any life or un-death obstacles, and it ends more when Segan's script has run out of vignettes than when the actual story is over.  Still, it sails its two pleasant characters off into the sunset agreeably and at the end of the day, that is what the film is after all; agreeable.

DO NOT DISTURB

Dir - John Ainslie

Overall: MEH

The second full-length from Canadian director John Ainslie, Do Not Disturb wears its metaphors of trying to cut free from a dead end relationship on its bloody sleeves, yet it does so with mixed results.  Set and shot in Miami, it follows a miserable couple who have spent years making half-assed excuses to stay together and as these last ditch effort vacations often go, such a retreat hardly saves their pairing.  Instead, a mysterious drug-infused experience only temporarily bonds them in the most unhealthy of ways, (to say the least), and the errors of their faulty time spent going through the motions only become fully embraced once a whole lot of carnage has been unleashed.  Writer/director Ainslie has a solid premise to work with and he pulls off a second and third act that is consistently tripped-out and brutal, but things are too ugly and monotonous along the way.  In the leads, neither Kimberly Laferriere or Rogan Christopher are likeable, so spending the entire movie within their dysfunctional dynamic is a chore, even if Ainslie peppers some fleeting moments with jet-black humor.  The ending is particularly drawn-out, which may be intentional so that we feel the claustrophobia of the characters who spend almost the entire film in their mid-level hotel room.  By the time that the credits hit while still dishing out the aftershocks of such nastiness, we the viewer are ready for our own, (hopefully not as violent), vacation.

 

DEEP FEAR

Dir - Grégory Beghin

Overall: MEH

A hybrid of Neil Marshall's The Descent and John Erick Dowdle's As Above So Below except with Nazis, Deep Fear underwhelms with the weight of its predictable beats caving in on themselves.  This was the second full-length from director Grégory Beghin, a French/Belgium co-production that ventures into the Paris catacombs and on top of dead ends and claustrophobic tunnels that only idiots in horror movies venture into.  Our band of dimwitted characters also find skinheads, Resident Evil CGI zombie dogs, and a sixty-plus year-old S.S. officer who has been living in a German bunker off of rats since World War II ended without his knowledge.  While these hapless protagonists are a likeable bunch personality wise and we are given enough bonding time with them to care when they get hopelessly terrorized, Nicolas Tackian's script never throws any surprises at us.  The opening scene spells out the danger that lurks underneath the civilized world, so the rest of the film is just a drawn-out ordeal where we wait for the people on screen to realize just how doomed they are.  Setting the film in the 1990s is a wise move since it makes the premise of a survived Nazi soldier and the electricity in his bunker still working almost plausible, (and also does not allow anyone to have cellphones to call for help, not that they would work in such an underground context), but the whole film still hinges on a silly concept where people would go into a claustrophobic and uncharted no man's land just for shits and giggles.  We know that they are in a horror movie, but they do not, so there lies the problem.

2022 Horror Part Twenty-Six

SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS

Dir - Erik Bloomquist

Overall: WOOF

Leaning into the comedy while still having children and people's loved ones being brutally murdered in front of them, Erik Bloomquist and his co-writer/producer Carson's She Came from the Woods is a more problematic offering than usual from the duo.  This is because on top of its tonal issues, lame-brained dialog and plot maneuvers, (all of which have plagued their previous films to varying degrees), here they have unleashed a boatload of obnoxious characters in such a hackneyed setting.  Specifically, Adam Weppler's mulleted, thirty year-old counselor may be the worst person to ever exist in a movie, but everyone else gets their moment to either act like an asshole, a moron, or both.  Any bloody romp at a camp grounds is bound to get the slasher comparison to when these premises were utilized left and right in the genre's heyday, but the 1987-set tale that the Bloomquist's have come up with here is particularly eye-ball rolling in its laziness.  The script comes off more as something that was authored by AI as opposed to actual human beings, but considering that the brothers are of the age to champion throwback genre tropes, it makes sense that they have little interest in offering up any surprises.  Why they instead have concocted something so stubbornly annoying is just unfortunate.

COSMIC DAWN

Dir - Jefferson Moneo

Overall: GOOD

The sophomore full-length Cosmic Dawn from writer/director Jefferson Moneo is inspired by his own personal, alleged UFO encounter, which would explain its central theme of people that have experienced the unexplainable who finding solace with others who have.  Opening with a scene that introduces the inciting extraterrestrial incident in protagonist Camille Rowe's life, it then bounces between two time lines that consistently shift where the characters lie as far as their devout belief is concerned.  Moneo's story presents a type of eye-brow raising New Age hooga-booga that is as difficult to buy into for the viewer as it is for some of the people on screen, yet said people seem aware of this, even when it comes to the mysterious and smirking cult leader, (played ideally by Antonia Zegers), who likes to show off her multi-langue skills, give people balls-tripping blue plants, and burst into song.  The neon-colored special effects are properly psychedelic, and the musical score by Alan Howarth and MGMT gives it a midnight movie vibe that is fitting for something so inherently strange.  While it dances around the understandable cynicism associated with those who are "all in" on the whole UFO abduction thing, it ultimately leads to a positive place where regardless of what if anything is really out there, it sure feels good to bask in its healing properties.

BAD GIRL BOOGEY

Dir - Alice Maio Mackay

Overall: MEH

A clunky mess with its heart and ambitions in the right place at least, Bad Girl Boogey is the second full-length from the writer/director team of Alice Maio Mackay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson.  Slasher movies are and have always suffered from formulaic shortcomings and this is no exception, presenting us with yet another goddamn masked serial killer who picks off teenagers and gets an under-dramatic reveal in the closing moments.  Made independently and on a shoestring budget, it is an understandable mixed bag as far as presentation goes.  The practical gore effects are nice and squishy, the color scheme adheres to giallo flashiness, and the young cast give it their emotionally-ravished all.  At the same time though, the hand-held camerawork is irksome at best, the look and mannerism of the hoodie-wearing murderer is unimaginative, and there is an icky, mean-spirited undercurrent to the tone that is intentional yet exhausting.  Story wise, it suffers similar inconsistencies even as the queer agenda is admirable, pitting its boring killer against gay and lesbian victims while wearing a disguise that "frees" the wearer to indulge in anonymous bigotry.  That said, much of the dialog, characterizations, and sinister details are cliche-ridden, making it unintentionally silly as it tries to be hip, stylish, and gut-wrenching all at once.

2021 Horror Part Twenty-Seven

THE FEAR FOOTAGE: 3 AM

Dir - Ricky Umberger

Overall: MEH

For the third installment in his micro-budgeted found footage series, filmmaker Ricky Umberger continues to expand his own mythology with a mix of enduring and embarrassing results.  The Fear Footage: 3 AM is more aligned with its immediate predecessor The Fear Footage 2: Electric Boogaloo than the initial entry in the series, going meta again, this time with a southern bro YouTuber who investigates everything that came before while of course finding himself trapped in the Twilight Zone from hell loop that has become the norm.  Umberger has consistently merited each of these releases on a strong premise, so it is no surprise that the first act is again the most interesting and well-executed.  It takes ages for our lone protagonist to interact with another person, (actor's name unknown since none of these movies list any credits or have any conventional promotional material, which in and of itself is refreshing and unique), and his examining of the now abandoned town of Darkbluff, Maryland is wonderfully chilling.  Things eventually amp up as they are wont to do and sadly, Umberger still thinks that is it creepy to have his actors talk in cringe-worthy "scary" voices while wearing dollar store Halloween costumes, (also, lots and lots of jump scares again), but even with the arbitrary spookiness being more silly than terrifying, this is easily the most agreeable movie in the lot.

THE GIRL WHO GOT AWAY

Dir - Michael Morrissey

Overall: MEH

 

Eleven years after his directorial debut Boy Wonder, filmmaker Michael Morrissey taps into psychological thriller terrain with The Girl Who Got Away, but the results are undermined by some unintentionally absurd moments.  On the plus side, the movie's foibles do not occur until the third act, which tries to deliver on an impending mystery and a relentlessly dour mood surrounding a grown woman who has structured her life around survivor's guilt after being the lone "girl who got away" from a female serial killer at an early age.  The details pile up as things progress, intriguingly at first, but Morrissey cannot help himself in laying on twists and turns that both confuse the plot and suck the life out of it.  Things become a mixed bag in the process, with some embarrassing line readings, implausible shocks stemming around characters briefly living through brutal stab wounds, a goddamn shotgun blast to the face, and even a fetus being taken out of a pregnant woman, weak dialog, jump scares, CGI gore, and a hackneyed protagonist revelation where she overcomes her life-long trauma by the bloody conclusion.  The film has too mush sincerity to outright dismiss, but it still comes close to being a cringe-worthy disaster.

 

DON'T SAY ITS NAME

Dir - Rueben Martell

Overall: MEH

 

A noble story that focuses on the long-endured hardships of indigenous communities with much of its cast giving solid performances, director/co-writer Rueben Martell's full-length debut Don't Say Its Name falls victim to humdrum genre tactics and an unintentionally silly supernatural presence.  Shot in a particularly blistering Alberta, Canada, various townsfolk start getting picked off by an invisible assailant that is accompanied by a putrid smell that only its victims can detect mere moments before getting brutally slashed up.  Racism, local politics, war trauma, and the unfortunately all-too-common reality of corporations inching in ever further on Native American's land all play apart in fleshing-out a plot that has its heart in the right place, further enhanced by a number of also Native actors who wear their people's trials and tribulations on their face and every utterance.  It is a shame then that the antagonist entity is portrayed the way that is is.  In its mysterious and unseen form, it causes CGI blood splatter to appear in a laughable manner, and when it does finally become flesh and blood for reasons that are not explained, it looks like a corpse-painted reject from a teenage black metal band.  There are such few horror elements to begin with that this would have benefited from their elimination altogether, which would have made its sincere attempt at shining more light on a still prominent problem that much more compelling.

2021 Horror Part Twenty-Six

HOMEBOUND

Dir - Sebastian Godwin

Overall: MEH

 

The full-length debut Homebound from writer/director Sebastian Godwin is refreshingly brisk and simple in its construction, but it is also an uncomfortable and frustrating watch in some respects.  Besides an opening scene where a newlywed couple is driving in a car, (a scene that miraculously does not result in them getting into an accident as is nine-hundred percent the case with other horror movies), the entire film takes place at a spacious manor house in the middle of nowhere.  Things follow a formulaic path at that point where we meet three children who ignore the answers to questions, act like assholes, and exhibit concerning behavior as their dad plays along and also exhibits concerning behavior, raising nothing but red flags for Aisling Loftus' befuddled stepmom.  Godwin fails to do much of anything unique with the tropes that he has at his disposal here, and it becomes more annoying than anything to watch four fifths of the people on screen do everything in their power to make Loftus's character want to run to the hills while throwing her wedding ring into the wind.  The finale is left ambiguous, but it also clearly suggests what we have suspected all along, thus negating much of its intended impact.

DAWN BREAKS BEHIND THE EYES
Dir - Kevin Kopacka
Overall: GOOD

Austrian-born filmmaker Kevin Kopacka's sophomore full-length Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes, (Hinter den Augen die Dämmerung), teeters recklessly on the edge of being decipherable, but it is also a bold experimentation in throwback, Euro-trippiness.  Kopacka allegedly self-financed the production which is shot entirely at a castle in Lalendorf, Germany, and this aspect is utilized by the movie-within-a-movie framework.  There is a significant rug pull that kicks off the second act, so significant that it grasps the viewer in anticipation as to what could possibly happen next.  This is a risky maneuver and certain audience members may throw their arms up in frustration as Kopacka continues to not hold your hand for the rest of the trek, but for those who are patient, there does seem to be an agenda hiding underneath all of the wickedly-realized style and aggressive incoherence.  How men and women relate to each other in a patriarchal relationship or the chauvinistic aggression brought on by the reverse, (meaning men who are forced to be subordinate to a wealthier woman), is the main theme, be it one that is clouded by ghostly flashes, abrupt violence, sexed-up tension, limbo/purgatory time displacement, and an orgy that dips its toes into Brian Yuzna's grotesque masterpiece Society.  Its sheer ambition is commendable, and that is probably enough at the end of the day.

NIGHT AT THE EAGLE INN

Dir - Erik Bloomquist

Overall: MEH

A schlocky little indie offering from the sibling filmmaker duo of Erik and Carson Bloomquist, Night at the Eagle Inn plays more like an elongated episode of Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? except with a more adult slant.  This is to say that it is a simple yet silly tale set at a single location and with a minimal cast, wrapping itself up in a brisk seventy-minutes and ultimately not amounting to more than just a fun supernatural romp done on the cheap.  Shot on location in Vermont, it sets up the age ole haunted hotel trope, this time being visited by fraternal twins who are investigating the death and disappearance of their parents that they never knew.  Taylor Turner and Amelia Dudley are well cast as the inquisitive siblings, not just because they are fine actors whose bickering with each other is both adorable and believable, but because they legitimately look like brother and sister, both passable for the same age and sporting big, expressive eyes.  The Bloomquists may have put some of their own quirks into their characters here, but some of the set pieces are clumsy and the story itself is more dopey than ingenious.  It sticks to its tone though, plus supporting players Beau Minniear and Greg Schweers know how to chew the scenery as the mysterious inn employees, but it still falls short of being memorable.

2021 Horror Part Twenty-Five

THE CHANGED

Dir - Michael Mongillo

Overall: MEH

 

Imagine Invasion of the Body Snatchers remade with pocket change and that gives you an accurate idea of what Michael Mongillo's The Changed is.  That may be an undeserved and harsh assessment considering that the movie seems to have its heart in the right place, going for something more poignant than cheap cliches or exploitation.  The small cast give the heady material their all, delivering their simple-minded dialog as if the future of mankind depends on it, which indeed it does in a story about an ambiguous extraterrestrial threat, (or something), that transforms people via saliva because that is a lot less expensive to film than having fleshy cocoon pods.  As opposed to every cinematic version of the aforementioned Invasion of the Body Snatchers though, Mongillo is forced to keep everyone in a single location for most of the time, and the script is ill-equipped to offer up anything interesting to say without exciting set pieces.  By trying to build up a sense of ticking clock tension where everyone has a day to either conform willingly to their new alien hosts or be taken by force, sticking people in a basement to endlessly repeat themselves and argue without getting to the nitty gritty of what it means to retain one's individuality simply does not work.  Tony Todd is always good, but that is about it.

LUZIFER
Dir - Peter Brunner
Overall: MEH

 

On the surface, writer/director Peter Brunner's Luzifer is an ugly and sobering look into an extreme form of mental illness where people have been crippled by their own demons and sufferings to isolate themselves from a society that will not allow such detachment.  Though despite the grimy aesthetic, rudimentary yet tragic plot, and squeamish moments between its two person cast, (Franz Rogowski and Susanne Jensen, respectfully), there is a palpable beauty in the visuals.  Peter Flinckenberg's cinematography captures the Austrian mountains in its awe-inspiring majesty, with its characters willingly living off the land in continuous and humbling harmony with their creator.  Supernatural elements are hinted at yet never made manifest, as if there are forces at work all around a doomed mother and son duo who persistently ask where the devil is.  A form of an answer arrives, yet it is of the all too real variety of both encroaching capitalism and the inevitable outcome of a mentally stilted upbringing that leaves Rogowski's ignorant and confused son to try and hopelessly save what cannot be saved.  The movie lingers more than it wallows, but it is still an exhaustive experience that paints a bleak picture when all is said and done.

KICKING BLOOD

Dir - Blaine Thurier

Overall: MEH

A tonal blunder of a movie, musician-turned-filmmaker Blaine Thurier's Kicking Blood drops the ball as a horror comedy and instead meanders in a type of mopey haze with actors who are void of charisma, nothing in the way of memorable set pieces, flat visual language, unsympathetic characters, and tripe dialog.  The vampires as drug addict metaphor has been done plenty of times, so it makes sense on paper to bond a frustrated bloodsucker with a suicidal alcoholic, yet their chemistry is never convincing.  Alanna Bale and Luke Bilyk seem bored in the leads as they wade through portrayals that are only matched in lukewarm disinterest by everyone else on screen.  Worst of all character wise is Vinessa Antoine who encourages Bale to fall back off the wagon because that's the "real" him and she just wants a drinking partner, which is matched by another set of undead sticks in the mud who want Bilyk to stay on the straight blood and narrow just because the script needs to make obvious connections between everyone.  It is hard to hate a film like this since the approach is somber and heartfelt instead of hackneyed, but it never commits to a compelling agenda and sucks the life out of its own story, which seems to be sucking the life out of the people on screen as well.  Maybe it hits the mark exactly then, but with nothing and no one fun to buy into, it also wastes its potential.

2021 Horror Part Twenty-Four

WHEN THE SCREAMING STARTS
Dir - Conor Boru
Overall: MEH

 

Taking its cue from black comedy mockumentaries Man Bites Dog, The Last Horror Movie, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, co-writer/director Conor Boru's full-length debut When the Screaming Starts is off to tired start from the onset.  Not to shoot it down on premise alone since how many "city family moves out to a haunted house in the country" stories have we endured over the decades, per example?  That said, Boru's concoction here offers nothing new or interesting to its niche, giving us another aspiring filmmaker who decides to follow a serial killer around in order to break new cinematic ground.  You know, how literally NO aspiring filmmaker on the face of the planet would ever do, let alone with a murderer who willingly wants their crimes fully documented.  Whereas other movies of this nature utilized such an absurd-on-paper premise to examine severe mental illness or people's inherent addiction to violence and the sociopaths who inflict it, this one just goes for straight goofiness.  No one on screen is relatable as they are merely cartoonish caricatures whose only purpose is have enough silly quirks to garnish some macabre chuckles, but it lacks the charm, inventiveness, and comedic chops of say What We Do in the Shadows, which is yet another superior film that it can be inspirationally linked to.

MEDUSA
Dir - Anita Rocha da Silveira
Overall: MEH

 

Whereas Robert Eggers remarkable The Witch shined a light on Puritan fear-mongering dogma gone awry, Anita Rocha da Silveira's sophomore full-length Medusa looks at violent Christian youth gang culture in her native Brazil with more aggressively unpleasant results.  The issues that can be found with such a film are intentionally in place, namely that both its subject matter and its characters are top-to-bottom appalling.  Yet simultaneously, da Silveira slowly unveils an agenda to break down the disgusting and hypocritical hierarchy that its female characters have willfully endured.  Groomed to be on their best behavior and to present physical beauty and godly cleanliness in order for their men to exhibit any form of violence against them or others that they wish, (when not making swooning girls watch them practice choreographed macho dance routines or have a hunky preacher expel anxiety demons from his flock), there is an inevitable primal screaming breaking point to it all.  Along the way, da Silveira takes an arhouse approach, balancing bizarre set pieces that bounce between the ridiculous, the violent, and the frightening.  Unfortunately, the movie's over two hour running time affords for it to meander with characters that take too long to garnish any sympathy for, if any sympathy is garnished at all.  It is stylish and challenging with a great soundtrack to boot, but it still falls shy of deserving its redemptive arc.

SHAPELESS
Dir - Samantha Aldana
Overall: MEH

Eating disorders are, (perhaps), oddly absent as subject matter in the horror genre, which is something that at least gives Samantha Aldana's full-length debut Shapeless an edge.  Co-written by its lead actor Kelly Angell, it is a disturbed character study that tries to capture a type of consuming anxiety where one finds themself at a loss to connect with the rest of the world as they are swimming in their own growing psychosis.  As an aspiring jazz singer with bulimia, Angell is vulnerable throughout, presenting herself at a persistent distance from her co-workers and band mates while she hallucinates various body mutations that only she can see.  This of course is a clear cinematic representation of what those who suffer such afflictions endure, obsessing over their appearance and finding unflattering faults no matter what the scale says.   Yet Angell's ailment seems to go much deeper than simply a weight issue in comparison to conventional beauty as her struggling musical career and ambitions, (coupled with jealousy), are as big of a drive if not more so.  It makes for a confused watch that is more concerned with its psychologically dark ambiguity than in anything graspable.  This is likely intentional, but despite Angell's solid performance and some artful visuals, the film wallows more than it captivates.

2021 Horror Part Twenty-Three

THE INNOCENTS

Dir - Eskil Vogt

Overall: GOOD

Creepy kids in horror movies are a trope as old as time, and Norwegian writer/director Eskil Vogt goes somewhere idiosyncratic with his young cast in his sophomore full-length The Innocents, (De uskyldige).  Set during summer break in an unassuming apartment complex, three youngsters discover that they have some form of superpowers, yet the main focus is on one of their sisters who does not.  Rakel Lenora Fløttum's autistic sibling finds the ability to speak through a telepathic link to one of the other children and later develops a form of telekinesis which local outsider Ben, (played by Sam Ashraf ), also has a more matured and dangerous form of.  Vogt's presentation is minimalist and lingering, spending the majority of the time exploring these kid's relationships with their family and each other, but he does so from a distance that never lets us get too close to anyone.  This is unfortunate since there are some harrowing moments, plus a progressing theme of morality and the unavoidable and ergo heartbreaking element of growing up where the world's evils lead to a loss of innocence, (hence the film's title no doubt).  A tighter approach could have been more compelling, but the movie still accomplishes a lot by taking such a unique angle with its subject matter.

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER

Dir - Kate Dolan

Overall: MEH

A promising if faulty debut, You Are Not My Mother stems from Irish filmmaker Kate Dolan and busts out the ole changeling monster for a contemporary tale that is centered around an outcast teenager.  Sadly, Dolan indulges in obnoxious bullying tropes where high school-aged assholes behave like psychopaths and the only parent that does anything is the disturbed mother of our protagonist who scares them away when one of them is about to blow-torch her child's face off.  Implausible nonsense like this aside though, the movie is emotionally on point as it examines the turmoil suffered by a lonely young woman who has grown up in a dysfunctional household with vague superstitious leanings, unanswered questions, neglect, and overall concerning behavior.  Dolan uses a few common genre motifs like obvious nightmare sequences, creepy faces in the mirror, and some good ole fashioned gaslighting, but the film has a grounded and intimate aesthetic that is benefited from on location photography and a minimal amount of otherworldly set pieces.  Somber and humorless, (besides one or two unintentionally schlocky moments), it is also well-acted from top to bottom and takes itself seriously enough to have its heart in the right place at least.

TO THE MOON

Dir - Scott Friend

Overall: MEH

The to-date only directorial effort from actor Scott Friend, (who also stars in the lead), To the Moon is an interesting if faulty examination of insecurities and emotional distancing.  Only three actors are present and the entire film takes place in a remote cabin where thespian Friend and his former ice skater wife Madeleine Morgenweck try and reconnect after the former's drug addiction has seemingly cost him his career.  If only it were so "simple" since Friend's estranged off-the-grid brother also randomly shows up doing a makeshift form of goofy yoga right outside the ole family home.  What follows is a series of awkward conversations and the ole trope of passive aggressive malevolence just lightly simmering under the surface.  This creates a proper psychological aura for Friend's central character who is closed off, ashamed, and frustrated with many aspects of his personal life, let alone the reemergence of his eccentric brother who is full of good advice that nobody is asking for.  Most of the movie plays out in a straight-forward manner even if several things do not seem to add up due to Friend's psyche cracks, but it all unfortunately get too murky to make its point.  The finale seems abrupt as if it is landing at some clever revelation that it does not deserve, but there are still some compelling and half-explored ideas here that are well performed and hint at a better realized film than what we got.

2020 Horror Part Twenty

LINGERING
Dir - Yoon Een-Kyoung
Overall: MEH

 

While it does not attempt to reinvent the wheel in any capacity, South Korean filmmaker Yoon Een-Kyoung's Lingering, (Hotel Leikeu), does a compelling job within its supernatural formula.  A few logistical leaps and jump scares notwithstanding, Yoon creates the correct steady mood where a luxury, vacant hotel keeps wielding strange and spooky secrets that revolve around a dysfunctional family where everyone seems to kill themselves, go missing, or are just plain crazy.  Se-yeong Lee's trouble past makes her ill-equipped to take care of her now orphaned young sister, yet having her "aunt"/dead mom's best friend look after her at the aforementioned hotel also seems problematic from the get go since arbitrary ghost things happen as soon as they get there.  Yoon piles on the freaky set pieces and never lets any humor into the proceedings, managing to make some cliched scares less schlocky than they have any right to be.  The strong performances carry a lot of weight in giving everything a serious tone, and Lee's building dynamic with her estranged little sibling, (played with the right amount of aloof trauma by Park So-yi), keep one invested even if the pay-off is more bog-standard than satisfying.

THE FEAR FOOTAGE 2: CURSE OF THE TAPE

Dir - Ricky Umberger

Overall: WOOF

Indie filmmaker Ricky Umberger follows up his little-movie-that-could debut The Fear Footage with the apply titled The Fear Footage 2: Curse of the Tape and it is yet another wildly frustrating and uneven pile-driver into the found footage sub-genre.  Once again, Umberger finds an effective angle to kick things off, going meta with himself and another actor from the first movie who play versions of themselves that have seen said first movie and are confused as to why, (and more importantly how), they could have possibly been in it.  Forgoing the anthology route then, it follows a linear path where an investigation goes underway, except that both the characters and the audience leave the proceedings with more questions than answers.  Unfortunately, the audience is also going to depart with either a feeling of annoyance or uncontrollable laughter at how the material is handled.  Umberger has an admirable sense of exuberance towards his chosen genre, but his work comes off like that of a nine year old horror nerd who got his hands on a couple hundred bucks and a camcorder while having no idea what logical behavior is or that all of his ideas are more embarrassing than cool.  That said, there are several moments sprinkled throughout that might make a fun YouTube Creepypasta short, but as a full-length film that really wants to be The Blair Witch Project for Halloween, it is more adorably stupid than anything.

HOSTS

Dir - Adam Leader/Richard Oakes

Overall: MEH

Music video directors Adam Leader and Richard Oakes's full-length debut Hosts is an off-beat home invasion movie that gets stuck in the muck from the second act on.  One could call the tone imbalanced, but it actually serves to keep the viewer on edge up until a point as we watch characters behave as if they are in a quirky comedy before a never-explained demonic and/or alien force starts inhabiting them.  The violence comes in brutal bursts from there and while they provide an effective jolt at first, the movie degresses into a mundane series of miserable set pieces where characters are both psychologically and mentally tortured within a slasher, "picking everyone off" framework.  The family who are terrorized have their own baggage to be exploited by the evil "hosts" of the title; a young neighbor couple who come over for a Christmas dinner and act zombie-like from the onset.  No one notices this which provides some plausibility errors, and more typical behavior continues that sticks to the trope of people in horror movies doing things, (or not doing things), that the audience will be annoyed by.  Sadly, the otherworldly ambiguity is too half-baked to be interesting and the same can be said about our crop of characters whose grueling ordeal ultimately falls on deaf ears.

2020 Horror Part Nineteen

KRATT

Dir - Rasmus Merivoo

Overall: GOOD

 

The goofy Estonian fantasy comedy Kratt takes its folkloric title creature into a digital age where bored kids and hippy community groups are attached to their cell phones, plus a possessed grandma wreaks havoc on a small town during summer break.  As far as a premise goes for supernatural high-jinks, writer/director Rasmus Merivoo is trekking down the right avenue and he keeps a ridiculous tone throughout where everybody playing it straight just makes it that much more amusing.  For something so silly though, Merivoo's script bites off a lot and arguably more than it needs to.  We bounce between several characters that frequently interject with each other, but it makes for a convoluted scenario that is uneven on occasion.  This to say that some set pieces are more hilarious than others, with certain characters coming off as ill-defined, particularity Ivo Uukkivi as a clumsy governor whose eventual suicidal mopiness is never made convincing.  Even with an unnecessary drawn-out ending in slow-motion, there is enough inventiveness here to admire, plus any kid-centered adventure with uncomfortable gore is bound to garnish some deserving chuckles.

MOSQUITO STATE

Dir - Filip Jan Rymsza

Overall: MEH

 

After spending several years on Orson Welles' final project The Other Side of the Wind and its accompanying documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, Polish filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza returned to the director's chair with the English-language Mosquito State, (Komar).  It recalls the famed body horror work of David Cronenberg as well as his 2002 psychological oddity Spider, focusing on an aloof outcast that becomes host to a swarm of mosquitos for reasons that are never made clear.  In fact little is crystalized here from a narrative perspective since Rymsza and Mario Zermeno's script exclusively focuses on such an eccentric and unrelatable Wall Street trader as its protagonist.  Beau Knapp exhibits textbook level autism and Asperger's Syndrome in his portrayal, failing to make eye contact with people, aggressively delivering his nerdy dialog about complex financial systems and insect ecology, having the courting skills of a ridiculed social outcast, and looking disturbing with an increasing amount of swollen bug bites morphing his face into a garish freakshow.  Unfortunately, is character is so nebulously strange that the equally impenetrable plot becomes that much more frustrating to endure, since there is nothing here to latch onto.  Still, it has an unnerving style that melds interestingly with its upscale Manhattan setting.

 

12 HOUR SHIFT
Dir - Bea Grant
Overall: MEH

Actor-turned-filmmaker Bea Grant's second full-length from behind the lens 12 Hour Shift pairs her with Angela Bettis as a cynical and disgruntled nurse with a side hustle that goes awry.  Bettis had long proven herself just as capable at handling dark comedy as she is at nailing eccentric leading ladies and she thankfully gets to do both here, rolling her eyes in endless frustration at her increasingly bad night at work.  Everyone else on screen also seems to be enjoying themselves playing local Arkansas yokels, with Chloe Farnworth in particular making a fun and dimwitted accomplice.  Even wrestling buddies David Arquette and Mick Foley show up for a couple of scenes.  While several jokes land as the hectic plot flies more and more out of control, just as many of the gags hit with an awkward thud.  Wacky implausibilities, characters behaving however they need to in order to propel the plot forward, and a random musical number all fall on deaf ears, but Grant balances the tricky tone as well as could be expected.  It gets by on its performances and the indie production qualities, (several behind the scenes personnel pull multiple duties), but it falls short of nailing all of its parts.

2020 Horror Part Eighteen

CAVEAT
Dir - Damian Mc Carthy
Overall: GOOD

A case of relentless unease over relatable storytelling, Damien Mc Carthy's full-length debut Caveat is a mixed bag when looked at completely, yet it excels in areas that most genre movies fail at.  Shot cheaply and with a minimal cast, the production department does marvelous work under such confines.  The small isolated island house where the film takes place nearly in its entity is a textbook creepy locale, with numerous holes in the wall, shoddy electrical wiring, rusted and bare bones furniture, and an overall aesthetic as if nothing but ghosts have been "living" there for decades.  Yet what could have been cliched and unconvincing is instead turned into a place of hair-raising dread due to the slow boil approach, minimalist soundtrack, and some wonderfully creepy moments that make no logical sense yet still achieve the best type of subtle haunted house freakiness.  The first and third acts are the most effective when we are wondering just what kind of supernatural tomfoolery is conducting business here, but sadly, the middle section throws in an unnecessary twist that deviates from the more interesting otherworldly aspects.  It takes some plausibility liberties early on as well, but as far as spooky for the sake of spooky goes, it deserves an A.

HAGER

Dir - Kevin Kopacka

Overall: MEH

A frustrating and aggressively impenetrable full-length debut from filmmaker Kevin Kopacka, Hager, (Hades), takes a relentless, drug-fueled trek into the psyche of its title character; a police officer that is assigned the case of tracking down a dangerous street narcotic that sends its users into a psychological abyss.  Based on such a premise, expecting anything coherent here would be a mistake on the viewer's part, but the translation of Kopacka and co-screenwriter H.K. DeWitt's ideas makes for a muddled affair that never gains any focus.  It essentially deals with the duality of Philipp Droste's protagonist who has undergone or is undergoing some kind of family trauma that is never explained, while also dealing with his own infidelity and frustration with his long-term yet doting girlfriend.  This is all under the backdrop of his stressful and dangerous job, yet the problem is that the free-flowing and non-linear narrative throws everything into question.  We have no idea what are actual events or what are hallucinations, which again is likely done purposely, but it puts us at a constant distance from the people on screen, as if they are merely disturbed mental fragments instead of actual human beings to relate to.  It is all in service of a waking nightmare that isolates the one having it, but the wacked-out and start-and-stop style is more aggravating than engrossing.

TEN MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Dir - Erik Bloomquist

Overall: MEH

In the half-assed throwback Ten Minutes to Midnight, Erik and Carson Bloomquist go for head-trippy excess in the work place, with veteran scream queen Caroline Williams picking up where she left off in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 as a radio DJ who undergoes a night from hell.  The specifics are different of course, with Williams herself being long in the tooth, (pun intended because vampires), and playing a character that is unceremoniously replaced at her job with a young attractive upstart by her misogynistic boss.  The Bloomquist's go to some weird places within such a context, playing off of the traumatic insecurities of Williams' character who feels that she has given her best years to her gig and now has to be put to rest, eternally it would seem.  Where the whole undead metaphor fits in is murky at best and the dialog, performances, and tacky set pieces are full-blown schlock from front to back.  This is unfortunate since there are some sincere themes being explored around ageism and sexism, plus it is always nice to see actors getting more work in and embracing a genre that made them famous three decades ago.  Williams is ideally cast in this respect and she knows the assignment, but the movie itself stumbles through its agenda.

2019 Horror Part Twenty-Three

SPIRAL

Dir - Kurtis David Harder

Overall: MEH

Horror movies seem destined to turn a profit even if they are done on a modest scale, which explains why so many independent filmmakers work within the genre.  Yet sometime the inclusion of supernatural or malevolently disturbing elements undermine a story that would have been better served without them.  Such is unfortunately the case with director Kurtis David Harder's Spiral; a film that spends its first half exploring the type of understandable and devastating paranoia that is suffered by same sex couples coming out of the AIDs epidemic.  Set in 1995 yet flashing back ten years earlier when the plight of the gay and lesbian community was at an even more abysmal stage of acceptance, the script by Colin Minihan and John Poliquin paints a devastating picture when a recently out-of-the-closet gay man, his teenage daughter, and his partner that was traumatized as a teenager by witnessing his boyfriend's murder via bigots all move out to the country for a fresh start.  A typical set up as far as locale is concerned, but the main focus on Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman's growing suspicions about their new community open the door for illogical and cliched behavior where unsettling things are routinely witnessed yet either never mentioned or brushed off when they are.  Eventually, the horrory elements become more prominent and they are both vague and hackneyed enough to come off as an afterthought, derailing an otherwise harrowing drama about the disenfranchised.

SATANIC PANIC

Dir - Chelsea Stardust

Overall: GOOD

Though it falls down the stairs during its finale, Fangoria's Satanic Panic does a commendable job as a ridiculous bit of blasphemous mayhem.  The full-length debut from director Chelsea Stardust and authored by familiar genre experts Grady Hendrix and Ted Geoghegan, it plays out like a more knowingly stupid and tighter scripted version of Ti West's problematic House of the Devil.  Though set in modern times, its adherence to gory practical effects gives it a throwback aura, that and the movie's title which obviously recalls the 1980s wave of pandemonium where moronic soccer moms and religious zealots were convinced that Dungeons & Dragons and Judas Priest were corrupting the nation's youth into a world of Great Deceiver worship.  The presentation here leans into such goofy cliches, with arbitrary demon rules, millionaires in red robes, nasty spells being cast left and right, and an overall theme where the little working class Joe, (or Samantha in this case, played charmingly by Hayley Griffith), gets taken advantage of by the upper one-percenters that still want more by way of unholy sacrifices.  It is equal parts amusing and clever until it backs itself into a corner during the final set piece, plus this may feature the most unrealistic depiction of what delivering pizzas is actually like.  Still, its shortcomings are forgivable due to what it gets right, plus Rebecca Romijn as a cock-sure High Priestess and Jerry O'Connell as a perv in his underwear is always a hoot.

 

SCARE PACKAGE

Dir - Aaron B. Koontz/Emily Hagins/Noah Segan/Baron Vaughan/Anthony Cousins/Courtney Andujar/Chris McInroy

Overall: WOOF

The easiest tactic to take when doing a horror comedy is to make fun of the inherent comedy in the horror genre itself, yet as producer Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns' anthology outing Scare Package proves, such a formula can be more grating than fun if it is in the wrong hands.  In this particular case, it is in multiple wrong hands since seven segments plus a wraparound one are handled by various filmmakers, some of whom are relatively inexperienced from behind the lens.  This is the type of film that has its heart in the right place and has no intention of being taken seriously, but it is also a low-rent one that comes after an incalculable amount of others that do the same ole shtick.  If there were any inventive laughs to be had here then maybe one could forgive yet another self-referential rehash of pop culture genre gags that are played up for nyuck nyucks by an endless stream of masked killers and slasher bait characters who never stop quipping, no matter how much blood and internal organs are spilled.  As it stands though, the results here are insufferable, rendering this as something worse than just a painfully unfunny meta-horror romp; it is actually a pointlessly unfunny meta-horror romp.