Dir - Scott Slone
Overall: MEH
Writer/director Scott Slone's Malibu Horror Story tires to be two different types of horror films at the same time, a conventional one and a found footage one. While this is an admirable ambition from a conceptual standpoint, unfortunately the results are tripe at best and obnoxious at worst. The trajectory which is laid out in the first act maintains some good grace for awhile, where we meet four young and attractive leads, (that are not annoying dipshits for once, but worry not, those guys arrive shortly), who are paranormal investigating a cave where some recently graduated high school bros went missing some time prior. We then get a refreshing way to deliver just about all the exposition that we will need in a lengthy documentary format that our protagonists are currently working on, bringing us up to date in order for the film to switch to a version of Neil Marshall's The Descent, except with Native American mysticism, non-written characters, and loud screechy soundtrack noises literally every time that the camera movies quickly to catch something potentially "scary". The final set piece where evil forces are finally unleashed is borderline terrible due to how insultingly generic and uninspired it is, but the road to get there alludes to a more unique hybrid of styles, be it one that unfortunately it cannot live up to.
Dir - Sid Lucero/Vic Lucero
Overall: WOOF
No budget faux-art house nonsense, Pink for the Masses is an embarrassingly ambitious debut from the filmmaking duo of Sid and Vic Lucero, one that is an unapologetic excess of fetishism via pretentiousness. It recalls other trying-way-too-hard micro-budgeted student films, (or films that look and behave exactly like student films), that are experimental either deliberately or they just come off that way because the creative personal behind them has neither the means nor the talent to do anything that is provocative or interesting in a remotely user-friendly context. A woman prattles on aimlessly with "evocative" dialog that sounds as if it was written by a twelve year old who did a school paper on Stockholm syndrome after Google searching what "BDSM" is. Shown almost exclusively in hand held and digitally obscured close-ups, said woman writhes around either naked or in pink panties and a tank top, occasionally making herself puke and drool or letting her tormentor/soul mate cause such puking and drooling when he shoves his fingers down her throat for minutes on end. It bounces between arty pedestrian imagery, some of which is softcore and some of which also softcore yet uglier, telling no narrative and saying absolutely nothing about anything. It is too pathetic and ridiculous to warrant any emotions from the audience besides boredom, which is probably the opposite effect of what any highbrow bit of "challenging" movie-making is going for.
Dir - Kenneth Dagatan
Overall: MEH
For his second full-length In My Mother's Skin, (which like its 2018 predecessor Ma also falls squarely into regional folk horror), Filipino filmmaker Kenneth Dagatan has crafted something exhaustively bleak. Period set just as World War II is wrapping up, the focus is on abandoned family who has to fend for themselves when their father departs, accepting the help of a smirking supernatural goddess that is clearly up to no good. While the situation could be worse, (said family lives in a spacious mansion in the middle of nowhere, which is better than being homeless at least), they are fucked from the onset, at the mercy of predatory military personnel and left with hardly any food to eat when their mother becomes cripplingly ill. It is no wonder then that one of the children goes for the tempting offer made by the mysterious and loudly decorated fairy in the woods, even if we and probably even she knows that there is a good chance that there is a diabolical catch to it all. Everything becomes clear when it is too late of course, and it is thematically adjacent to Guillermo del Toro's historical dark adult fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth, except there are various stock horror beats, no sense of childlike wonder, and no uplifting reprieve. This is miserable and heavy stuff, and Dagatan stays the course for those who can appreciate the relentless atmosphere and harrowing trajectory.
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