Dir - Maritte Lee Go
Overall: MEH
Why, after over a century of them, do vampire films have to keep explaining the rules? While individual tweaks to well-established mythos are appreciated and honestly necessary this far into the game, we do not need to endlessly rehash the prerequisite scene where characters find themselves gobsmacked by the existence of real-life bloodsuckers only so they can hit the library, the internet, or consult a conveniently local expert on how vampires are spawned, how they are killed, etc. We have all seen one, (or hundreds), of these movies, we get it. Unfortunately, this and other formulaic tropes litter Black As Night, the full-length debut from director Maritte Lee Go, which is an otherwise likeable if unnecessary horror comedy with its heart in the right place. It has an identical tone, premise, and structure as Oz Rodriguez' Vampires vs. the Bronx from the previous year, making it even more redundant than it already inherently is. Here we are in a post-Katrina New Orleans where citizens are still struggling to keep their heads up in an impoverished community, ravenous blood-suckers thrown into the mix via an elaborate and long-running scheme to overpower long-standing oppression only complicating matters. The vampires growl, (loudly), and scream, (loudly), like all humanoid monsters in any contemporary horror film are seemingly required to do, relative youngsters decide to go up against them single-handedly without even bothering to notify the authorities, characters suffer harrowing loss while the tone steers vaguely towards the humorous, the cinematography is too dark to see what is going on during the night scenes, the jump scares are predictable and stupid, and it is all too safe and rigid to avoid being anything but forgettable.
Dir - Matthew Ninaber
Overall: MEH
A schlocky Canadian action movie with screeching zombie monsters and zero distinguishing factors, Death Valley is the latest from actor/occasional filmmaker Matthew Ninaber. The film steers clear of looking like a straight-to-Redbox cheapie, digitally and professionally photographed with a dark and earthy color pallet, lots of slow motion, dirt and grime, exploding firepower, and both mounted and drone shots, with gruff actors doing their best to act macho and occasionally engage in some mild quips with each other. Ninaber keeps up a kinetic pace as indistinguishable mercenaries yell, trade cliche mannerisms, shoot things, and yell some more, but the tripe dialog comes off as even more pedestrian with B-level thespians who look the part yet never exude any charisma. This is necessary for any Predator-style shenanigans to connect, and one could imagine a stable of A-level actors or even some established WWE personalities being able to elevate the by-numbers material. It is not that anyone on screen here is bad at their job, it is just that the script which they are presented with is so formulaic and so soulless that it seems AI-generated, giving them nothing interesting to work with. There are no sparks of creativity, no inventive shifts from the straight-and-narrow, testosterone-ridden monster shoot-em-up framework that has been done in various forms so many times. It never becomes obnoxious or embarrassing, and all of the pieces are there that one would expect, but that is the problem. Throw in some curve-balls, dodge some foreseeable avenues, and then maybe the results will be more than merely competent.
Dir - S.S. Jishnu Dev
Overall: WOOF
Visibly bored actors who are supposed to be amateur paranormal investigators, (very, very), slowly walking around the forest and frequently stopping to do either nothing or deliver mere variations of the same bare-bones expository dialog is nearly the majority of the excruciatingly stagnant hour and forty-five minutes that is Amanuda. At one point the heavy-set character actually tells everyone to slow down even more because he cannot walk that fast, thus providing narrative justification for the pacing to slog ever further. Adding more minutes still, the film is bookended by yet another paranormal documentary crew watching the comically meandering footage of the first crew, all of which is shown in its entirety until the literal first sings of any production budget hit the screen when one of the characters has freaky contact lenses on and some blood trickles down a hole in a door. It is not an exaggeration to say that the rest of the movie looks like it was shot for zero dollars in a single day since no supernatural anything is captured on screen, only generic "scary" sound effects added in post which these poor people on screen obviously had to merely pretend that they were hearing during shooting. This helps to explain their alarming lack of emoting or agency at any point, and the whole thing has the feel of a scam that was done with an insulting lack of effort in order to get a streaming deal to dupe people who generally are intrigued by found footage properties. It hits a new low for the genre and should be avoided at all costs.
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