⭐️⭐️
Sam Mason seems pretty relaxed for a man looking into the abyssal eyes of death. His final seconds in the electric chair don’t seem to bother him much and it turns out there’s a good damn reason for that. He may have been prevented from killing the classically handsome Terri, but it would seem he was able to get his thirteenth victim to complete some kind of immortality-granting satanic ritual. Terri, now with aspirations to be a reporter, has agreed to write an article on Mason for a local newspaper in a macabre celebration of the one year anniversary of the serial killer’s execution. After watching a segment on the show Super Natural, she decides to attempt to catch the ghostly voice of the man that tried to kill her by placing a microphone’s tape recorder on his grave. Unfortunately, a scuzzy grave robber comes across the device and decides to steal it. He listens to the recording and is possessed by the undying spirt of Sam Mason. What follows is a sluggish chase that fills up the majority of the film. There’s some violence but we’re more-so treated to B-Roll and some of the worst delivered dialogue this side of a Canadian head trauma ward. There’s a shit-ton of padding but it is an interesting look at the gestation of what Hugh Gallagher would bring to the table with his essential Gore Trilogy. It also lacks that sexy insanity that the best of the brain damaged SOV would provide. It’s a little fun but all in all it could have used some cutting of nearly half the runtime.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Folks disappearing into thin air is a crisis plaguing national forests worldwide. I’ve read the books. Written by a man with questionable morals. So it all must be true. McKenzie’s sister Marylyn has become a number in that troubling statistic but McKenzie is not going to sit back and take “We can’t find her.” for an answer. Along with her brother Martin (a knockoff Stephen Dorff), Martin’s fiancée Darcy, Darcy’s brother Edgar who has just gotten out of the hospital following a manic episode and Gerrik, their British pal who supplies comic relief, the group journey into the Cinder National Forest to find the missing girl. Marylyn had left a journal behind which featured some odd claims about doorways to different dimensions and nature not behaving as it should. These claims are enforced by a local named Leon who knows a thing or two about the high strangeness of the area and was in communication with the missing girl before she apparently slipped into the void. McKenzie figures this all sounds insane and thinks it best to keep this from her search party companions. Leon provides a couple vials of red liquid which he says will fend off the hallucinations that are definitely in the groups future. So it’s into the wilderness and into the paranormal clutches of things we humans could not possibly comprehend. May the forest Gods bless a solid cast and gorgeous filming locations because it gives your film a nice head start while it works towards revealing its cards. Family drama, suspicious claims and mystery motivations serve as building blocks but the odd woods quickly begin to play with the group almost immediately after entering the park. Ghosts and monsters haunt ‘em all, starting with the unstable Edgar so the hikers have a reason to doubt the growing uncanniness at first. An unsetting sun, an opening murder, woodland sex (dirt and leaves getting where dirt and leaves should never be is not an erotic scenario), hallucinations of something inhuman, possession and a central mystery that works well enough to keep you focused while it picks apart our group of heroes. Yeah there’s some predictable bits and yeah the British guy gets on the nerves every so often and yeah there’s some questionable story paths and sure there’s some eye-rolling thanks to overblown melodrama but it’s more intriguing than grating and the paranormal threat is given some thought as opposed to just slapping a cgi monster into scenes and spraying blood on the wall. It’s like a tame Evil Dead with a science fiction twist produced by a disgraced CW writer as an extended two-part pilot for SyFy… and that’s alright in my eyes.
aka Dark Heritage: The Final Descendant
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Following the massacre of a bunch of campers on a Louisiana campground, reporter Clint Harrison is sent to the area to investigate. It ties into a thought-to-be-dead family by the name of Dansen. The clan vanished years ago leaving behind an old mansion and a bit of infamy. Clint and his buddies decide to spend the night and get to the bottom of things. Well, the Dansen clan didn’t exactly die out, they just went underground and years on years of inbreeding has led to deformities and a diet frowned upon by the general public. The trio of buddies have a natural charisma that only years of friendship can account for because judging by the wooden line delivery, they’re buddies first and thespians second… maybe third. But that’s fine by me, never bothered me this far outside of Hollywood. The night they stay there, Clint’s friends and equipment go missing and the local police are thinking Clint may have something to do with it. Clint is ordered to take a paid leave and forget about the story he was working on but we all know that won’t be happening, especially when a tape from the missing camera he had set up overnight turns up in his car. It shows one of his friends being dragged off into the dark. Clint starts reading up on the history of the Dansen home and meets two graduate students researching parapsychology and the three head out to figure out what’s rotten in Louisiana. According to local legend, the awfulness concerning the home and the area around it is always proceeded by a bad thunderstorm. Damn shame that violent weather is hitting. After finding nothing but large “badger” holes they decide to wait out the storm in a camper van that belonged to a couple of the folks murdered in the massacre. One dude gets his face torn up and Clint convinces the dead man’s buddy they have to bury the body because nobody will believe them and they’d probably go to jail. Instead of just leaving it all in the past and dropping the obviously dangerous investigation, the two goofs keep digging. Tunnels under a forgotten graveyard and a big family secret bring things to the inevitable conclusion. Lovecraft’s Lurking Fear gets another uncredited adaptation but this time it’s on a budget and wearing its regional horror heart on its sleeve. Yes. That is a compliment. I’ve had a soft spot for this one since stumbling upon it years ago at the local video store I haunted for decades. It just shows what enthusiasm can bring to an obviously strapped production. Everybody looks like somebody’s uncle and the rubbery monsters are a treat along with the sudden bursts of graphic violence and unsettling nightmares that work way more than they should.
⭐️1/2
Dirt-cheap horror hijinks filmed on location at Smokey Joe’s Cafe in Charlotte, NC follows the misadventures of a cannibal who runs his own shithole restaurant which serves people to people. But I’m getting ahead myself, first we travel back to the year 1386 and witness a trio of black-robed members of some brotherhood punish a high priest by feeding his immortal ass a potion which causes rapid decay and the only way to restore it is too eat human flesh. Got it? Good. Now you’re all caught up. So now undead cannibal Goza is taking his curse out on the world… by randomly killing idiots who happen upon his place of business. He’s got a big-old servant by the name of Blozor who collects victims and a wait staff that are a mixture of horny and rude. A young man’s gal goes missing and he finds her ring in his hamburger, when he raises his concerns, Goza has Blozor kick him out. The dude ain’t gonna give up that easy and he manages to convince a horny blonde waitress to help him out. Or so he thought, after they discover a room full of severed limbs, he ends up getting a large butcher’s knife to the gut care of the blonde waitress. Why? I’m not really sure… she seemed pretty terrified and I think she ends up dead soon after. Maybe it was hypnotism? The movie just kind of carries on like this for a little more than an hour as random folks are introduced and then get murdered and served for dinner. There’s live music, an endless awkward dance party, actresses that are definitely actual North Carolinian strippers, the kind of performances one would expect to find in a film called Gore-met, Zombie Chef from Hell, Goza waxes poetic to the camera, a crazy homeless man hangs around outside the restaurant warning people away and talking about the importance of a “book” needed to defeat Goza and the paint drying just beside your television may prove to be a bit more thrilling than what’s happening on screen. A librarian shows up and Goza gets the hots, she also steals a big-ass antique book from his mantle. Those brotherhood derps show up again, talking about fixing their mistakes and putting an end to Goza for goodza (thank you, thank you). I’m usually all about these backyard epics but outside of brief inspired moments, this bad boy just drags major ass. It’s got aspirations or maybe it’s just delusions.
1/2
If you didn’t know by the title alone that Dustin Ferguson was showing love (or lazily stealing from) Tobe Hooper’s essential horror film, the opening text crawl and narration will be a dead giveaway that you’re about to sink into a cheapjack homage (or rip-off) of that classic massacre that went down in Texas. Here, it’s Halloween night and some college kids are throwing a party on the old stomping grounds of a killer clown by the name of Gilbert Gacy. Gacy’s ghost is there to greet the elderly college kids with various joke weapons in hand. A poorly done TCM follows after an extended bit of getting to know all of the characters that could be called “charm vacuums” on a good day. We’re talking like twenty minutes with these dinks in a movie that runs forty five. They check out a Spirit Halloween (one of the worst places on earth) and spend a seemingly endless amount of time trying on costumes and looking at decorations. So, take how annoying and unpleasant a trip to Spirit is in real life and then multiply that by ten because it’s all set to some awful electronic music. That finally fucking ends and everyone heads to the party at the dead serial killer’s abandoned home. Lame party shenanigans kick in to more electronic music. Hope you like lethargic dance moves and a level of sadness you haven’t experienced at a party since that birthday in Joey’s basement where the ladies never showed up and Joey’s mom forgot to order the pizzas. This also goes on way longer than expected and if you haven’t hung yourself by this point, I’m sorry you’ve experienced garbage worse than this. With twenty minutes left, the big ol’ ghost clown shows up and gets his kill on… in between a story about Gacy’s history and shenanigans from our “heroes”. The kind of filmic diarrhea that gives backyard filmmaking a bad name. The low-effort villain costume still works and deserves a better film built around it. The last seven minutes are credits, so go fuck yourself.
aka The Last Halloween/Dead Forest/The Suicide Forest
⭐️⭐️
College student Maiko journeys to Japan’s infamous “Suicide Forest” (gorgeous British Columbia, Canada unconvincingly filling in) along with her friends to honor her mother who took her life there a couple weeks ago. There’s a ceremony to perform to allow her mother’s soul to move on into the afterlife and she has it in her head that she needs to perform it. Her friends decide this is great material for a documentary thesis and invite along another dope to film everything. A hiker (Hiro Kanagawa) warns them they should leave and let the dead rest in peace but nobody ever listens to mysterious hikers. Maiko has dreams about her biological mother and a creepy Asian ghost girl which is why she is determined to make this trip and put things to rest. There’s also a photo of a tree that sent to her along with some keepsakes and it just so happens the hiker knows where this tree may be. How fortuitous! A couple fellow college students play a prank on them because humans are awful and it’s Halloween and man there’s a whole bunch of white people in Japan at this location. Helpful hiker doesn’t like that these derps are mocking the spirits. These derps behave accordingly and don’t really give a shit. Technical malfunctions and voices on the wind arrive soon after along with some ghostly visions of suicide victims visited upon our hero. The prankster dopes go off on their own and come across an abandoned campsite with plenty of creepy shit strewn about. When lead idiot investigates he finds a Rolex and takes it. Come on, now. Fuckin’ dink. Now the spirits are angry, especially the dirty lookin’ ghost lady creeping around the woods. The authorities find our documentary team and kick the “kids” out after the cameraman slips them an SD card claiming it to be the footage they have shot in the woods. It’s not. A missing dip has everyone staying to look and getting lost and separated from each other as the hiker tries to assist with cryptic warnings. A couple get arrested, a couple blunder into fatal accidents and the arrested folks end up being held in a storage spot for recovered corpses while the police rightfully treat them like disrespectful assholes. A mostly cookie cutter plot is littered with uninteresting characters but does offer up some enjoyable supernatural violence and it’s always good to see Kanagawa delivering no matter how lazy the script is. It also finally gets my kind of silly with fifteen minutes left in the runtime.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
I saw 1988’s Scarecrows when I was probably way too young but it had the effect of causing in deep-seated love for killer scarecrow films. So, no matter how straight-to-dvd they would be, I would greedily scoop up any killer scarecrow flick that came my way and watch with a big dumb grin on my big dumb face. Dark Harvest, Scarecrow Gone Wild… it’s all me, baby! I think if you’re even just a little familiar with my movie watching, you know I’m kind of the abused spouse when it comes to my relationship with found footage horror flicks. I love the bastards but they keep hurting me and I keep on coming back, thinking this time they’ll prove to have changed for the better. Just take a gander at my library of reviews and the question should pop into your gorgeous head: “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Why the long-winded opening? Well, I was probably a bit too excited for the prospect of a found footage scarecrow flick but here we are and here I am. Smiling with my big dumb face. An insufferable social media chode (he’s supposed to be, the folks commenting on his video agree) hosts an edit of a much more popular social media couple’s videos following their move from Texas to a home in Los Angeles. Said Chode, Sandy, claims he put the thing together while pretty damn high so it’ll be like he’s joining us on a first-time watch. Henry and Haley are at least affable while being just as cringey as all of these social media “celebs” usually are… so, the actors are all doing splendid jobs. Unfriendly neighbors start things off on a sour note and Haley is disturbed when she finds a scarecrow propped up in their backyard, hidden in some vegetation. Henry doesn’t give two-shits and just assumes it’s a prank or something. As expected, things just get creepier and creepier. So much so that our wraparound douche begins to show some concern. An escalation in awfulness plagues the couple as something ancient and supernatural passes judgement and sins are revealed… all for the viewing public. Haley’s frustration with the “influencer” life she’s trapped in and Henry’s growing terror at the situation they’ve seemingly stumbled into just hastens the downward spiral. Mildly interesting in its buildup, it unfortunately falls apart during the reveal and the capabilities of some just can’t seem the handle the needed dramatics. Luckily, it brings back the fun for the climax and becomes the killer scarecrow found footage film it should be. There’s a good amount of wasted time and I probably just fucked up for being way too excited for a found footage supernatural scarecrow film. Now that I’m seeing that written out, I realize how big of a dipshit I am.
