⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Interesting found footage anthology structures itself around one man’s dangerous ambitions to catch a trans-dimensional entity on camera. That’s the basis of the wraparound titled To Catch a Demon which picks up with his research partners discovering their barebones lab-space unsecured, in disarray and their research partner missing. They check out the footage on the rolling camera to see just what the hell happened. The whole idea is that time fluctuations are where these entities labeled demons and spirits kind of exist between our known realities. The plan is to harness the human’s REM state (the closest match to the actual time fluctuation where supernatural things dwell) and allow one to view said things that go bump in the night. While this is going on, we dip into other encounters that have a tenuous connection to the researcher’s film and spooky shit happens. In The Hunters & the Hunted a husband and wife move into a fully furnished house in the hills. Their excitement turns to horror when some creepy shit starts up. Phantom footsteps, spooky knocks and moving objects get the husband thinking they should have a camera rolling at all times to document the strangeness. They bring in some paranormal investigators as things get aggressive. The ghost hunters see this as a ticket to hitting it big but the malicious nature of this haunting has some other plans in store for the trio of investigators. Some genuine chills and a satisfying ending make this pretty damn solid. After an awesome creature reveal in our anchoring segment and revelations of a pretty big problem, we hit up the next entry with Cam Girls. A cam girl is having blackouts as she and her girlfriend party hard with the money they’re making off of their shows. Things escalate as manipulation leads to physical violence and physical violence leads to one horrific revelation as to just what our concerned leading lady’s new girlfriend is actually up to. Flashes of cheap-looking fright makeup may have you rolling your eyes but the manipulation of the sad guy watching the show is the right amount of depressing. It all feels a little bit like a high schoolers short horror film that had some input from a teacher who knew what they were going for but didn’t want to take the reigns. It’s not too offensive but it’s definitely the weakest entry up to this point. Another revelation awaits our team of scientists as the head of the experiment realizes that no matter what things you uncover as you look where man was not meant to look, there’s always something worse just waiting to get in. Finally, Amanda’s Revenge hits and we watch a young woman slowly unravel the strangeness enveloping her life following an attempted rape at a friend’s party. Seems this was a trigger incident because there’s some bizarre crap in her past involving her mother murdering her father and intense weirdness. She crashes by her friend’s house and asks her three friends to watch over her while she sleeps. Telekinesis, aliens, self defense, friendship and sulphuric acid in water balloons all have their part to play as the drama unfolds. It’s all pretty fun and features a couple likable leads. Our main story comes to a close, time gets a little wonky and there’s a few bad ends in store for people. Outside of the shaky middle story, Dark Tapes is a winner which manages to keep things interesting and utilizes the found footage format to get past budgetary constraints.
aka Bunyan
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A group of somewhat likable first-time offenders discover the American legend of Paul Bunyan is true and way more horrifying than folklore has us believing during some boot camp rehabilitation program in the Ohio wilderness. Along with the five young criminals looking to get out of jail time is a hard-ass corrections officer and a sheltered social worker looking to reform the kids with counseling instead of punishment. It all goes to shit when the giant shows up with murder on the brain after one of the dinks desecrates the grave of his beloved bull. People get squished, sliced in half, decapitated, dismembered and impaled as the giant goober dishes out vengeance. One of the girls is the spitting image of the gal Bunyan loved more than a century ago and therein may lie the key to the survival of the remaining delinquents. Her sheriff father is also in the area, trying to get to his daughter before the big ol’ dummy does. The green screen work brings about some serious giggles and the cgi is your usual SyFy channel awkwardness and it all makes for an enjoyably idiotic monstrous slasher flick. Dan fuckin’ Haggerty pops in to fortuitously take a shit while his logging camp is murdered by a deformed lumberjack with an axe. His bowel movement awards him some extra time on this earth before he meets the conveyer belt o’doom. Of course, Joe Estevez is a crazy old coot with a penchant for scenery chewing and silliness (so, Joe Estevez) and knows the true story behind Bunyan. Bewbs, blood, Babe the blue ox and beards all get their time in the spotlight along with unearned melodrama and a lot of screen time for the lumpy giant. No complaints here.
aka Goblins
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A disturbed, woods-dwelling teen brainwashes the children of a small town and turns them into zombie-like cannibalistic killers. A writer and a sheriff eventually discover the awfulness but do little to block the flood of blood. The film opens with a camp outing between father and son. They eat some fish, sing terribly, play hide and seek and then papa steps in some kind of varmint trap and fucks up his ankle. Typical camping trip with dad, really. Days pass and nobody comes looking for them. Rations dwindle, papa loses his mind as insects feed on his leg wound, dad eventually succumbs to his wounds and the kid eats his innards. This is the origin of the teenage weirdo. Ten years later, the writer John (an author of books on paranormal phenomena) and his family visit his old friend in the New Jersey boondocks following the disappearance of the man’s daughter. A helpful Bible salesman lets them know the area’s dark history and about a recent spate of missing kids, when they stop to see if he needs help with his stalled car. Convenience in action. Not so convenient is when he ends up getting cut in half by someone with a scythe. John’s old buddy, Sheriff Ross, explains how they have no leads on the missing kids and is hoping his friend can lend him a bit of assistance, hopefully figuring out what the hell happened to his daughter and the other missing kids. The town doctor struggles emoting as he questions the author’s authenticity and the small town is getting fed up with the lack of answers. John brings a psychic in to assist, a religious dude in old-man makeup knows there’s some evil shit going down, an obnoxious reporter stirs shit up, the sheriff’s wife is losing her shit and John’s wife thinks his books and beliefs are absolute bullshit. Hilariously, the psychic (who abuses the term “deary”) is lured out into the woods and murdered before she can do anything to help. Like I said, our heroes know something strange is going on, they’re just really slow to figuring things out and there’ll be a bunch of bodies piling up before anything is done to put a stop to the awfulness. That “stop” is the backwards and overly-religious townsfolk taking action and wiping out the tiny terrors with brutal efficiency. It’s undoubtedly stupid, very cheap and charmingly fun… when there’s more than town dramatics happening on screen. The cast looks like they all drink together in a very dark bar with wood-paneled walls and one dollar mystery shots. My kinda people. If it was meant to be taken anywhere close to seriously, the climatic child massacre would probably be unwatchable… and I don’t even like kids. “Tear it to pieces! Bite through the bones! Gulp the blood! Gobble the flesh!”
aka Amityville: The Reawakening/The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes
⭐️1/2
The lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a single mother who moves into the infamous house with her three children under the guise of saving money to pay for the comatose son’s medical expenses. After the miraculous recovery (well, I mean, it’s a step up from being a vegetable) of her twin brother James (Cameron Monaghan), bitchy Belle (rocking some asscheek-revealing underwear around the old homestead which is quite concerning considering her age at the time of filming and the Weinstein taint of the production) begins to believe her mother is up to something else when it comes to their new residence and James may not be himself anymore. A fellow student lets her know how fucked up her house is and spooky shit begins cementing that fact. Nightmares pointing to a grim recreation of the DeFeo murders, Emma Swan showing up as the aunt, the original Amityville Horror getting watched by Belle and friends, cgi flies and Thomas Mann as a classmate obsessed with the supernatural history of the house and working as that character that usually shows up as an expert who delivers all the necessary information our hero needs to thwart the evil and move the plot along. Kurtwood Smith graces us with his presence as the family physician and that’s at least something nice to hold onto. There’s just not much else going on except for a few welcome faces. I don’t get to see a lot of Jennifer Jason Leigh nowadays and it’s a damn shame she got her wonderful ass stuck in such a damp squib of a movie where characters are either unlikable or forgettable and the script is lazy as all fuck.
⭐️1/2
A young married couple and their teenage daughter (they must have been six or seven when they had her) move into a lovely Victorian house with the husband’s recovering alcoholic/drug addict hippie-dippy sister. The daughter, Hailey, hates the house and is having issues with a clique of high school bitches (but she’s also finding love), Aunt Shea seems to be targeted by some malevolent force eating away at her mental health and mom and dad are arguing more and more. The house has a bad wrap in town and it’s looking like it’s a well deserved notoriety. A history of murder and creepy shit plays into the oncoming tragedy and the whole town is definitely harboring some secrets. A clunky and shitty stew of either annoying or boring characters (except for the sultry oddball property manager played by Tonya Kay), bad dialogue, worse shocks and poor decisions. Hilarious accidental incest, the aforementioned Tonya Kay, and laughably awful acting save the viewer from catatonia but by the time the painted up and possessed villain comes into play, you’ll be focused on something else, like replacing lightbulbs or dusting cabinets. It’s all more fun than dealing with this shit smear of a movie.
aka Swamp of the Blood Leeches/It Fell From the Sky
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t own a houseboat even if you don’t reside in Florida. Outside of people automatically assuming you’re a divorced rapist or drug smuggler or both, they’re easy targets for meteors. I would know. I’ve seen Alien Dead. Some Floridians reside on a houseboat (Yes. They are the exact kind of people you would envision residing in a houseboat) in the swamps and a meteor crashes into their floating residence, making their already sad existence much worse. Instead of just granting them the sweet release of death, they turn into zombies and once the fauna population dwindles, they turn their hunger towards the nearby town. As the small town residents end up eaten, the sheriff (Flash Gordon himself, Buster Crabbe) suspects a large gator (along with the rest of the town) but we know that ghouls are on the prowl and all hell is breaking loose. A journalist exposes the story (catching the eye of a blonde cutie with some cutoffs covering her booty) and a whole lotta bumpkins end up dead and/or walking dead. A game warden also doesn’t buy the story of a renegade gator. Pappy blames chemical warfare and giant possums… now that’s a movie I’d watch the hell out of! Fred Olen Ray makes some trash movies but he makes these trash movies for people like me so you won’t hear me complaining. The state of Florida may be an infected butthole on the corpse of America but the genre output (especially in that sweet spot of the 60s - 80s) is some of the greatest braindead backyard terror to ever grace this planet. It’s no different here. Performances come off like Mr. Ray picked his cast from folks who couldn’t cut it in a dinner theater run by a former pornographer and the zombie hijinks ain’t at all convincing but that’s why they warm my idiot heart. Dinky bars, a local band, Floridians with Californian accents, underwater (pool) action, barren sets and the Florida wilds further endear. There’s plenty of drag and nobody is all that likable (except for maybe the topless chick but she doesn’t do much but get topless, go for a dip and get eaten. Still. She seemed nice.) but it’s Florida so that tracks. But for every bit of lag there’s something just a bit special (the zombie attack set to a folksy country song comes to mind) and that’s all I ask for.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Another Malaysian short from the 3 Doors of Horrors extended universe has our security guard hero Azman Hassan return. This time he’s getting to the bottom of a haunting at a gym or it may just be a building that houses a basketball court. Is that a thing? The place is plagued with power outages and phantom dribbling as it seems this spirit just wants to get a game of hoops going with anyone. Bad news for the young man who has been ditched by his buddies and is now shooting hoops on his lonesome. Did I say Azman is getting to the bottom of things! Yeah? Sorry. That was a lie. He’s there in the beginning to notice that something odd is going on but then leaves to go get a drink. He’s my kind of hero. This one was solid and has a nice sting to bring it all home.
