⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A group of students focus on a spooky myth about a local railway museum and they plan on definitively answering the question if the place is actually haunted by a former conductor who became a serial killer and eventually met his end via splattering by train. Hell of a backstory for your haunting. Now, being students and having no sway on the workings of anything substantial, the trio sneak into the place after hours and record their findings after the museum head denies them the opportunity to come in after they close. There’s insurance purposes to consider, even in Australia and as interesting as a railway museum may be in the light of day, you’re not gonna find anything spooky while the sun is shining. That’s how this likable group of aspiring filmmakers get into the supernatural predicament when the building closes and they come into contact with something sinister. The ghostly activity starts off small and escalates as it always does but is nice and creepy given the setting. Three become two and the duo attempt to track down their missing sound man before fleeing the premises which are growing creepier by the second. I’ve never had much interest in trains but as my visit to a yarn museum taught me, museums make anything fascinating. So, we get a good chunk of time spent going through the sites and sounds of the place and I’m more than fine with that. Hell, it may not have the same atmosphere of an abandoned insane asylum but it’s way more fascinating. And you know what else is great about museums? They’re fucking terrifying when everyone has left. A solid forty-five minutes of found footage terror.
aka Night of Terrors/The Blade in the Body/Revenge of the Living Dead
⭐️⭐️1/2
In the late 19th century, a hooded figure stalks the dark at an isolated mental institution in the middle of the woods. The head of the place, Dr. Vance, is up to suspicious activities involving skin graft experiments so he’s hesitant about getting the local authorities involved in the string of murders. He’s already got a bad wrap after an accident left his sister deformed thanks to stumbling into a vat of lime during construction of the state-of-the-art clinic. The body count grows as staff and patients fall at the hands of the cloaked fiend. There’s plenty of strange suspects amongst the patients and staff and not just the hideously scarred woman and her up-to-something brother. Vance’s jealous wife, an elderly woman prone to violent outbursts when someone touches her stuffed cat (there’s a joke in there somewhere), a doped-up schizophrenic sure that everyone wants him dead, a head nurse with a stick lodged firmly up her butt, a bald servant who lurks just as well as every other bald servant in horror history and a horny handyman who just so happens to own a straight razor much like the one we’ve seen our gloved killer wielding. All there to raise suspicion. The clinic exists because after the accident that melted Vance’s sister’s face and a witness who claimed to have seen the doctor push the woman off a scaffolding, Dr. Vance had his reputation ruined and was forced to take on patients that no other place wanted. He now works on skin grafts with guinea pigs in his free time and hopes to restore his sister’s looks. A compassionate nurse (Mary, naturally) joins the staff just as the murders begin and the arrival of a scheming woman who is rescued by the doctor following a carriage accident sets things off into dangerous territories. This woman happened to stumble upon Vance burying the body of a murdered girl and, after failing at seduction, decides to blackmail the not-so-good doctor. She’s a real piece of work. Needless to say, there won’t be a lot of people breathing by the time the end credits hit. It’s a period piece proto-slasher that hits familiar story-beats from Euro horrors of the era. Eyes Without a Face being the obvious inspiration (as it was for many, many outings that followed and feels as if added as an afterthought to this) and mixed in with Krimis which would give way to giallo and the inevitable fierceness of the slasher genre. This one fits comfortably toeing the line of all three without being able to be pigeonholed in any descriptor. That’s not to say it’s a revelatory original script or anything, it’s all very familiar and it just adds and drops aspects of the film descriptors to make it so it’s kinda of everything and nothing all at once. It’s a bit stuffy and ambling but that doesn’t take away from the dark fun of the scheming (Françoise Prévost’s excellently awful blackmailer is a treat) and the eventual (admittedly limp) explosion of murdering that finally hits after chaos is brought to the secretive inner workings of the clinic. Beautiful women and some effective, cheap makeup effects also hit my sweet spot but you can tell it didn’t really have any idea of the cinematic stylings it actually had its hands on and fumbles everything. More interesting than entertaining.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Chilly bit of eco-terror is another win for Larry Fessenden. Tracking strategic drilling locations in the Remote Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a small group of people have assembled together in the snow-covered wilds. An American oil company, North Corporation, has set up shop and a team of environmental experts are along to make sure they don't destroy one of the last areas of unmolested nature. Company man Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman) arrives just as the the final measures are being taken to begin bringing in equipment and almost immediately things begin to crumble around the base. Radical temperature jumps and a quickly melting permafrost has convinced lead environmentalist James Hoffman (James Le Gros) that some unknown gas may be seeping out of the ground and causing the concerning mental breakdown happening amongst the crew. Yet he also has a sneaking suspicion that some unknown force of nature has finally had enough and is fighting back. When the frozen body of the youngest member of the team is discovered nude in the snow-bleached tundra, Ed tries to keep everyone in check so the oil operations can begin. This proves difficult as unease sinks in and more lives come to an end. Could it be that a ten-thousand-year-old bacterium is causing a deterioration in mental health or is there actually some preternatural force at work, finally fed up with man's incessant abuse of earth? I won't spoil it. The cast is excellent and the Alaskan and Icelandic filming locations carry a great atmosphere. The dread grows with each passing moment and is handled expertly by the sure hand of Fessenden. Violence hits like a hammer when it comes but is never unnecessary. The digital effects work is used sparingly and does not offend (there's only one scene that looks shitty) and the ending is near perfect. Ranks with the best of those classic "man should stop fucking with nature" flicks.
⭐️
The titular campgrounds are forced to close following a string of murders. Months pass and no leads are present, meaning the grounds are gonna be dormant until the authorities can uncover some sort of answer and that don’t look like it’ll be happening anytime soon. Welp, a busy camping weekend and a lack of forethought forces a group of dopes to sneak into the area to get their camp on. In this group is Brett who is having a rough go at the moment and it’s because his relationship with Scout has come to an end. Scout has even brought along her new boy-toy to rub poor Brett’s nose in. Relationship turmoil ends up taking a backseat because someone (or is it something?) begins picking off Brett’s group of friends and acquaintances. A local loon warns them to leave and they ignore it so they can keep on drinking and acting like assholes for the most part. Half-hearted montages and a lazy soundtrack of butt-pop drags us along with a group of people who are mostly unlikable. Luckily our lead Brett is alright (even though he’s way too old to be having the tantrums he does) and the girl in the group that likes him is a fine combination of sweet and cute. The obnoxious Trimmer’s girlfriend has a bad vibe about the place and gets made fun of for raising her concerns (she’s obviously right but it doesn’t mean much as she gets got pretty quickly… well, as quick as this movie can get around to anything of interest). I really wish something would start knocking these dickheads off. After half the runtime is spent on forgettable shenanigans, we get a glimpse of what’s gonna be causing a problem for the gang and I’m happy to say it ain’t some regular-ass slasher. Nope, we got some soul-sucking folklore creature finally getting around to massacring (that’s way too strong of a word) the idiots. The violence isn’t notable, the characters are mostly ass and the monster is a bit more silly than anything else. I admire what it attempted, I just wish it was capably handled.
aka The Japanese Evil Dead
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Fuck. Have you ever wanted to kick yourself in the ass so hard it would rearrange your seating situation? Until this moment, I have never felt such regret and anger at my foolishness. I have seen Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell and I wish I had watched it earlier. Thirty years prior to the film's main plot, an unhappy husband is seeking a divorce from his unstable wife. Her response is to attack him with a knife. He kills her in self defense and buries her body under the floor. Wham! Bam! We got a haunting, man! In the present, a physical fitness enthusiast pumps some iron and answers a phone call from his girlfriend, Mika. She's writing an article on haunted locations and is interested in the house his father left him. He agrees to show her the place. Of course, they bring along a psychic. The psychic foolishly summons whatever presence is in the house and shit hits the fan. The murdered wife wants revenge and she'll take it against the spitting image of her killer. Possession, dismemberment, attack by disjointed limbs, splatter, and a wonderfully cheap looking final villain parade across the screen like a family of low-budget, gore-soaked elephants. It's been a few years since I've watched the original Evil Dead but it's easy to recognize the love the filmmakers had for their inspiration. Dialogue, scenes and vibes carry a level of warm recognition that should tickle the weirdo hearts of all us genre freaks. The movie pulls off the look of a well worn VHS without resorting to that annoying-ass editing technique which followed in the wake of Grindhouse. BMBBIH feels like something you would have discovered in the horror section of your favorite mom and pop video store all those years ago.
1/2
Erin and her best friend Lianne had a popular social media channel which came to an end when it was realized Lianne’s battle with leukemia was coming to a sad end. Having nobody else, Erin was already adopted into the family following the death of her parents and she continues to shoot videos that really don’t seem like they should have any traffic, especially heavy traffic. But what do I know, I’m over here shaking my fist at clouds. Erin blathers on and on about her dead friend and her life and utilizes the acting skills of sentient lumber to explain the point of the film. Erin will be live-streaming her night in an abandoned and supposedly haunted house to raise money for the disease that claimed her friend’s life. It’s mostly just Erin talking to the camera about her dead friend and whatever uninteresting bullshit slips into her brain but there’s also knocking and eventually paranormal activity. An awkward mix of high quality found footage phone shooting and cinematic digital filming stands proudly in unison with the awkward performances and awkward storytelling. A chore that just keeps on going and then gets really stupid.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Novelist Ohm Bauman (Andrew Scott who you may know from Severance and Parks and Recreation but I will always remember from Hellraiser: Bloodline) journeys to an old Irish inn, looking to scatter his parents ashes at the spot where they honeymooned and always wanted to return to. Impossible for them because mom was murdered shortly after and dad became a drunken monster before eventually passing on. As is custom with quiet Irish inns, he gets himself ensnared in the machinations of a local legend said to haunt the property. The witch supposedly haunts the off-limits honeymoon suite and there’s more than a few stories about her. Ohm finds himself back there during the off season and unraveling a mystery that drags him deep into horrifying waters and dangerous secrets. Damian McCarthy (who impressed with Caveat and then blessed the genre with Oddity) lays the atmosphere on thick as he works masterfully again with the understated terror he manages to find in every inch of open space and shadow. There’s a level of hostility working under the fibers as well that fits so well into the “stranger in a strange land” foundation the folkloric horror and human corruption is built on. It also impressively has an ability to take things in unexpected directions without feeling like it’s cheating. Ohm is a dick but he’s able to remain charming because Adam Scott is really good at that character flaw and we also get enough backstory to find reason in those flaws. Hell, he even manages to convincingly slip into a slight selflessness. McCarthy has invented this world where specters exist, sometimes even making themselves known and he just keeps deepening its mythology. It’s a place where nobody in their right mind would want to go but I am always willing to visit.
