Dir - Pat Mills
Overall: WOOF
On paper at least, a noble attempt is made with director Pat Mills and screenwriter Alyson Richards' The Retreat, a Canadian slasher movie that sets about subverting "gay and lesbian as victim" tropes by pitting such a couple against a motley crew of redneck serial murderers who specifically target members of the LGBTQ community. Worse yet, they broadcast their slayings on a dark web streaming service with just as odious of a clientele chomping at the bit to see more and more people with "unconventional" lifestyles brutalized and killed in front of the camera. It is a sick premise that one can argue is nothing more than exploitative torture porn, with one-note, non-written bigots as villains doing the most deplorable things imaginable to a demographic of people who have long suffered discrimination and abuse in various forms. Because the film eventually morphs into a revenge action romp with its two badass lesbian protagonists turning the tables, it undermines its severe subject matter. Instead of drawing attention to an all too real problem that LGBTQ folks face on the daily, (all out hatred), the movie goes for cheap jump scares and R-rated slasher schlock, making this a miserable and stupid genre excursion, except just with good intentions.
Dir - Nick Simon
Overall: WOOF
One of a handful of screenlife horror films that was slapped together during the COVID-19 pandemic, Untitled Horror Movie is probably the most insulting, lazy, and obnoxious of them. The bar is so low concerning found footage movies that it actually takes an impressive amount of effort to stand out horribly, and the only reason that this one is done in such a format is because all of the parties involved were quarantined at home, like many others were at the time. In other words, this has no business being a found footage movie since it behaves in the complete opposite manner of one. Scary music runs continuously and the editing is hyper-kinetic, giving it a conventional flow to emphasize nyuck nyucks and tripe scare tactics. Every narrative aspect is as generic as they get, but that is OK apparently since we have yet another horror movie where the characters endlessly rip on how stupid horror movies are while behaving exactly like stupid people in horror movies. This stuff is rarely cute and it is excruciating here, largely because each person on screen is a caricature of an annoying, narcissistic young actor with interchangeable personalities that make them unsympathetic, boring, underwritten, and grating enough that they practically dare the viewer to shut the whole thing off within the first ten minutes. If anyone does so, worry not, you will miss absolutely nothing.
Dir - Brandon Christensen
Overall:WOOF
The only breath of fresh air in Brandon Christensen's Superhost is that it easily could have been another influencer-themed found footage movie since it is indeed about a Youtube couple filming their latest entry and complaining about the lack of likes and subscribers that they are getting. Instead though, the film is played straight, but it still stumbles down the stairs in too many areas. This has one of those horror screenplays where in order for the whole thing to hit the eighty-four minute mark, the people in it must do things that normal human beings in their situation would never do. This leads to insulting behavior, particularly in the third act when Osric Chau and Sara Canning have multiple opportunities to escape their suspicious to deadly scenario, yet consistently make asinine choices to stay put. It grates on the nerves steadily throughout though, playing a long waiting game on the audience where we know from her first appearance, (let alone the movie's poster art), that Grace Phipps is going to go full maniac at some point. Yet the pathetically implausible way that everything gets there ruins such a gloves-flying-off moment, not to mention evaporating any sympathy we may have for the hapless dumb-dumbs that are caught in her path. Barbara Crampton shows up which is always nice, but as usual, she deserves better material.
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