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Melvin spends his days as a custodian at a bridal shop where the employees and the customers either treat him like shit or barely acknowledge his existence. He escapes to the building’s third floor where he can take out his frustrations on the mannequins stored up there. During his most recent weirdo attic session, Melvin passes out and wakes up to find the building closed. Being the uncanny freakshow that they are, the mannequins freak the hell out of Melvin. Hurling insults at him and finally getting some retribution. Mental illness? Supernatural revenge? I can’t say for sure but it’s only nine minutes long and it’s freaky as all fuck.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
There’s something wonderful happening in Texas… well, more than thirty years ago there was. Opening credits set to a true toe-tapping masterpiece ease ya in to a Tales From the Crypt yarn shot through the lens of cheap beer and good vibes. Some frat pledges are in a local cemetery desecrating a grave. The most nervous (and mullet’d) of the pledges shares the fraternity history with his cohorts and it’s sketchy as all fuck. Mr. Mullet (Donny Wahlberg… not the actor, that’s the characters name) heard from the wonderfully named Detective Tommy Stompanado that the Beta Phi house has a history of death and murder. We are then blessed with a black and white flashback to witness the sinister shenanigans of the fraternity founder. Harnessing the powers of darkness drove the man to extreme lengths (well, backyard budget extreme lengths) and contact with a great evil has the cocky man dooming his own future and the future of his fraternity. Tricking supernatural evil never really works in anyone’s favor. Fraternity president, suitably named Lance, sends the pledges to a forgotten cemetery to grab the founder’s gravestone and that catches us up to the present. The drunkest of the pledges gets left behind to stumble, vomit and pass out. This also gets him grabbed by the skeletal corpse of the fraternity founder who has a shitty sense of humor and a murderous streak thanks to the theft of his property. Lance (pledge master with the golden mullet) is proud of his pledges for leaving the deadweight behind. The Beta Phi Delta are also putting on a haunted house attraction and the shambling zombie shows up to raise some hell. Detective Stompanado arrives looking exactly as I had hoped and rocking his own signature score (also of the toe-tapping variety). He’s a very grumpy man and holds a grudge against the Beta Phi. He use to be one and knows they are no good. People die by the rotted hands of the zombie who can’t seem to help himself from making dad jokes at any opportunity and claims the pieces he rips from his victims as his own. Analogue bliss feels like a narrative feature pieced together as a history for a local spook show that a whole town participated in and put together by some very enthusiastic Famous Monsters of Filmland fans with the previous decade’s perversions seeping in. Local thespians and maybe a couple librarians with an acting bug fill out a cast that endears and the violence fits exactly in line with the limited resources not getting in the way on the filmmakers insistence on being as over the top as they can even if it’s not that much. Charmingly corny, slightly annoying but well-worth digging up.
⭐️⭐️1/2
The synopsis claims that a man dreams about a camera on his kitchen table and he finds the damn thing when he wakes up. The footage on the camera is his nightmare and that’s what we’re watching. I don’t think this is expressed in the film. A woman hires a man to film her husband because something very strange is going down. When the husband gets agitated, the woman tells the videographer to leave. Things get very strange. Insane people working under shadowy motivations seemingly pop up at random and it’s all caught through the lo-fi eye of our protagonist Alex’s camcorder. He flees into the night and then pops up back at the woman’s apartment where this all started. There’s something very wrong with her husband. Fuck if I know. The videographer meets up with a new person. It’s a guy showing off his new apartment. Unit 40. The guy goes on about religion and starts quoting scripture. The unit renter claims that he got the place at a steal because every other person who has lived there has died under mysterious circumstances. He claims he’s seeing a phantom tenant but he’s been unable to capture any proof. Hey! An actual plot… kind of. The renter is having trouble sleeping and believes something awful is going on as he slumbers. There’s definitely a woman wandering the apartment and she’s definitely not adhering to the laws of physics. More scripture is read and the renter acts strange. There’s alot of people acting strange in this. This is mostly a movie focused on people acting strange. Alex films the man sleeping. I start drifting too. The man rolls out of bed onto the floor and just sort of stays there. Alex investigates but finds the floor empty. “Spooky” demon voices and more weird behavior follows. The rental guy pees in a pot and calls it “discharge”. More scripture. I find myself drifting again. A random person runs at the camera, holding a knife and screaming. Perhaps the phantom tenant? I think that’s how the first segment ended. I don’t remember, that was days ago. A man brings in Alex to film his wife acting strange so he can use it to convince their pastor to perform an exorcism. She flees into an orange grove when her husband tries to take her to a church. She gets upset when Alex doesn’t answer if he wants to eat an orange with her. A mysterious woman shows up. We then go back to the apartment we’ve been at for all of the “segments” and see Alex speaking with the concerned husband as his wife acts… you guessed it… strange. If you’re playing the official Merits of Sin drinking game… congratulations, you’re dead. There’s an interesting sort of hazy nightmare logic at work that builds up a suitably baffling atmosphere but without much of a narrative to build upon, it just kind of gets lost in its own ambiance. Performances are where you’d expect them to be with something working under these budgetary limits (some much better than others) and it pulls off some minor eeriness as it wanders in and out of drowsiness but at more than 100 minutes, it feels like it’s dragging to a payoff that doesn’t exist. It has a better focus than the vastly overrated Skinamarink and a heavy vibe of the liminal spaces that haunt the Backrooms series but is also more watchable than either. You can throw it up there with The McPherson Tape (it has the conviction and skill to be convincing as an actual piece of discovered video) in the category of an interesting yet flawed found footage experiment.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Deep in debt and out of options, cute young Jackie goes to stay with a friend of hers in Thailand and tries to make some cash in the escort line of business. Her first job with some creepy crime boss is unsavory enough to get her looking at other options. She’s taken by her friend to worship at the shrine of the God of Gold with the hope that her luck can be changed through prayer. The unsavory crime boss creep hangs around and doesn’t mind resorting to violence to get his way. After he murders a couple nice young men looking to take Jackie out, she and her friend go and visit a holy man for help. She discovers she was pretty rotten in her past life and is paying for it now but there is hope. Hope lies in the practice of ghost nursing. She’s given a goofy little mummified-fetus-looking thing to worship and if done correctly her luck should shift for the better. And wouldn’t ya know it, she meets herself a man and the creepy guys she runs into meet with nasty fates. Looks like the tides are a-changing. But this is a Hong Kong horror flick, so ya know the good vibes ain’t lasting. Jackie neglects her duties and quickly learns the little bugger she’s been taking care of is easily upset. Her boyfriend witnesses the ritual and is soon tormented by supernatural shenanigans. He and his friend attempt an exorcism but only fuck things up more... dumbass gets himself possessed and gets up to no good, eventually transforming into an ugly zombie-like creep. There’s a mouthful of worms, a couple zombies, death by giant fork, a chubby little ghost brat and your standard climatic exorcism. Nowhere near the best HK horror has to offer, it’s still a pretty enjoyable time that kicks into gear in its second half. Subtitles on my copy are once again done by someone with a passing knowledge of Cantonese midway through a heroin binge so if my synopsis is off, I apologize.
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Five likable members of a mountain biking club ride right into serious trouble when they journey into Chiak mountain for some riding adventures while crashing at group leader Min-joon’s uncle’s mountain cottage. The man went missing from the place years ago but they try not to let that disturbing fact ruin the fun. The missing man’s daughter, Hyeon-ji, is invited along by her cousin, and she may be a little socially awkward but this affable group aren’t too annoying about it. The mountains also hold an urban legend concerning murder and mutilation which has given it an infamous reputation but that can be written off as bullshit ghost stories. So, even before they make it to their destination, there’s a lot of shit blatantly throwing up warning signs. They even get the standard old hermit (homeless person) warning them away from the area on the way in. While scouting for a good trail to set cameras up on to catch the biking, Yang-bae discovers strange rock towers set up in a creek and as soon as he prays for safety and fame, shit gets weird. Bright red lights, a sonic boom, a wonky compass and the rumbling of those rock towers all hit within seconds of each other and then everything quiets down. That night, something comes into the cabin and scavenges their food supply. Oddly leaving the meat strewn about the floor but munching on the lettuce. Hyeon-ji acts stranger than usual, staring off into the night but there’s riding to be done and the next day, they get their biking on. Hyeon-ji (who is the least experienced) wipes out and encounters a giggling little girl who runs off into the woods. She limps after the child (who may be her younger self) and stumbles across her father. Papa dissipates away like Thanos just snapped his thumb. It’s all a dream. But the high strangeness is only gearing up. Yang-bae catches something that seems to be camouflaged in the environment and not exactly human, but it looks like he’s creeping on his making out friends so they take the SD card from the camera. His minor tomfoolery is accepted but they won’t stand for perversion. Soo-ah develops a nasty-lookin’ rash on her neck, Hyeon-Ji’s nightmares grow progressively more unsettling, those bright red lights come back and the group gets agitated as their situation spirals further and further out of control and into the realm of the unknown. An underground bunker may offer up some strings of an explanation but unfortunately any answer just makes the realization hit that things are about to get much worse. Not at all what I was expecting but in the pleasantly surprising way. It falters in various bits with some ideas not being sustainable thanks to the budget but that’s only a quibble and doesn’t really take away from the slightly bonkers ride we’re taken on. It’s interesting, even if it runs a bit too long and feels just a little undercooked.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Things get dark for the world’s oldest-lookin’ thirteen-year-old when the dude that supposedly had a hand in the death of Harry Potter’s parents escapes from the wizard jail Azkaban. Oh, he’s also Potter’s godfather… throw salt in the wound why don’t ya? The scourge of Michael Scott, The Dementors, show up as the Azkaban guards who suck the souls out of their designated victims. The new Dark Arts teacher is David Thewlis (who is great) and has a lycanthropy problem to go along with another secret about the escaped godfather, Sirius Black (it’s Gary Oldman and he steals the movie to no one’s surprise). The true meat of the franchise begins to come together and bigger and better things are on the way. You don’t need me to tell you the supporting cast is wonderful (including Gambon’s first turn as Dumbledore) and the now middle-aged teenagers are all showing growth as actors and probably more than a couple grey hairs. A large revelation plays out and the damn thing is one big ol’ turning point for the whole series. J.K. Rowling brings time travel into the equation, further opening a whole new bullshit world of plot hole convenience for herself.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
There’s more hijinks from that wiener kid Harry Potter and his wiener friends at the most dangerous school in the world but this time around there’s a wonderful new scumbag in the form of Draco Malfoy’s father played by an excellent Jason Isaacs and a foppish out-of-his-element new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher played by a scene-stealing Kenneth Branagh. In the trade we get the Jar Jar Binks of the wizarding world called Dobby as he uses all his annoying skills to prevent Harry Potter from going back to Hogwarts. It’s not because he’s a dick or anything, it’s because there’s schemes in the works that will put the young man in mortal danger. An old diary connects Potter to a former student named Tom Riddle who has a big old secret and a hidden chamber is opened unleashing a very dangerous monster into the halls of Hogwarts. As usual, the supporting characters are wonderful and some of the kids don’t make me want to punch them… that’s a small victory for them. This would be the final turn as Dumbledore for Richard Harris who would pass away in 2002, sucks he’s gone but it would allow for Michael Gambon to take the role and completely become synonymous with the character until his death in 2023. Damn, the Harry Potter films left us with a lot of In Memoriums. The basilisk and giant spiders are pretty damn wonderful for this old monster kid.
