Dir - Larry Fessenden
Overall: MEH
Indie horror mainstay Larry Fessenden continues his solemn, modern day Universal monster reworks with Blackout, this time updating The Wolf Man to go along with 2019's Depraved, which was his version of Frankenstein. This is specifically a cinematic adaptation of one of Fessenden's Tales from Beyond the Pale podcast episodes which throws back to old timey radio serials of the horror variety, but he takes a more relevant approach by fusing daddy issues and small town politics together. It is an interesting angle to familiar tropes and material, but there is a tonal issue present in how much of the movie wants to be introspective and timely and how much of it also wants to be unabashed schlock. The performances are a mixed bag; sincere yet stuck within dopey dialog, forced expository information dumps, and simple-minded character traits that would be fine if it all did not take itself so seriously. From a production standpoint, Fessenden has been in the game long enough to turn in a professional looking film on a meager budget, and the cinematography, location setting, werewolf make-up, and gore all look splendid. In order to work though, the story deserves a screenplay that is both less-on the nose and trimmed of its unintentional goofiness.
Dir - Anthony Cousins
Overall: WOOF
Predictable, obnoxious, and ergo insulting, Anthony Cousin's full-length debut Frogman is another lazy found footage entry that could have been a fun parody if not for a barrage of mistakes made along the way. As is almost always the case with these movies, finding justification for the characters to keep the cameras rolling proves to be an insurmountable task, and here we have three unlikable dipshits who go to a town that milks their local frogman legend for tourists. One of our protagonists caught the creature on a camcorder when he was a kid and now is determined to prove that what he saw was genuine. While this is a stock if acceptable jumping off point, Cousins and co-screenwriter John Karsko's script piles on the hackneyed tropes, plus the presentation can never decide how serious to take things. Our three main characters who joke around and film private moments that have no business being filmed, Nathan Tymoshuk being a mopey loser who is desperate to capture the title creature yet insists on doing it with his grainy low-def camcorder from the 1990s, locals being interviewed, the footage becoming indecipherable when the "good stuff" finally shows up, a diabolical twist that a two-year old could see coming, and the list goes on and on. Instead of evoking genuine Blair Witch scares or taking the piss out of the formula with amped-up ridiculousness, the movie just clumsily rides its line and recalls countless other films that have done the same thing either worse, better, or just as bad.
Dir - Alan Scott Neal
Overall: MEH
After three short films, casting worker-turned-director Alan Scott Neal delivers his first full-length Last Straw; a nasty revenge thriller of sorts that takes a few clever divergents along its route. As a tale about over-wrought young adults who spiral down a rabbit hole of bad decisions during a particularly stressed-out evening, it gets by to a point, particularly in its first act which focuses on Jessica Belkin's protagonist who gets one tough break after the next while working in her dad's remote roadside diner. Yet when the plot takes an about-face twist midway through, the plausibility wheels start to get loose and this leads to an inevitably messy finale that sees people behaving in too barbarous of a manner to buy into. Performance-wise, everyone does acceptable work and Neal forgoes stylistic embellishments for stark brutalism, but there is little to no humor present to make the over-the-top spiral go down smoother. Instead, the movie becomes increasingly ugly, which does not jive with its narrative implausibility. It short-changes itself in the end, but the attempt is at least noble.
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