⭐️⭐️
Five friends film their summer road trip and take a detour to a backwoods town called Crowsnest where apparently they can get some beer for half price. Beer in hand, they ignore warnings to turn back and travel deeper into the woods on their way to a vacation cabin. Predictably, they get lost. Unpredictably, a pack of nomadic cannibals in an RV target them for dinner. Bad decisions cause all hell to break loose and the small group of dopes crack under pressure and turn against each other. They head out on foot to get to a higher elevation and get a signal after the RV runs down a member of their group and now, without the protection of the car, they’re easy to pick off one by one. Teamwork is out of the question because this clan of dickheads hate the hell out of each other and should not be friends. Obnoxious Justin fills out the standard roll of complete shithead behind the camera but he’s joined by a group of unlikable idiots as our protagonists, so they can’t get eaten fast enough. Their shouting and shitty behavior make them hard to spend time with but the thrills work pretty damn well. It’s got enough of a scuzzy and mean vibe to it that I’d be sure it was based on something by Richard Laymon, it’s just missing his ever-present uncomfortable sexual violence story beats. Damn shame we have to spend so much time with people I would kick out of my home after about ten minutes.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Answering a domestic disturbance call in a shitty part of town, two police officers find their night slipping out of control and into unexpected territory. A shooting leads to the partners scrambling to cover up their actions and avoid a public outcry but they’ll soon discover there is way more than their jobs and reputations at stake. With no radio communication available and screams coming from the dilapidated home, the cops enter the premises without backup or clearance. Problematic for sure, but the only witnesses are a couple tweakers so it won’t be much of an issue if any questions get raised. Not that they’ll be much time for questioning when what’s in store for the two men reveals itself. Strange markings and blood stain the walls and the basement is home to a deep pit, I’m sure you can figure out what unfathomable chaos has been unleashed. The Underman has marked them, the locals insist that there is a price to be paid, the guilty officer’s health declines and it’s nothing but pandemonium for the rest of the night. Sean Rogerson (Grave Encounters) plays the cop who pretty much fucks everything up although I get why he took the shot but I’m not a trained officer so what do I know. Jaime M. Callica is his partner that gets dragged into the conspiracy because he’s loyal to his partner no matter how much his conscious is at war with his actions. They both give solid performances and successfully pull off the juggling act of complicated morals and survival instincts. All presented from the unflinching eye of the two body cams, it’s suitably immersive but it’s not really anything all that new. There’s a few memorable spots but it never really feels like it cuts loose enough to be all that different. The entity may be AI generated slop or cgi slop, I can’t really tell but either way I do know it looks like slop. It’s far better produced and put together than a bunch of the found footage nonsense I dip my toes in so don’t say I’m ignoring the obvious effort behind it… I just may watch too many of these god damn things.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A poor alcoholic undertaker has a shitty second wife (Malee) who has a shittier son (Mol) and they make the lives of his children (daughter Chaulau and son Lorr) from his previous marriage a living hell. Malee threatens to leave unless the kids obey her and her sleaze-ball son has the hots for his “sister”. She has no desire to reciprocate but that doesn’t stop him from trying... forcefully. New-mom stops giving the kids money so Lorr hatches a plan along with his two friends to gather up some “ghost money”. A custom of the area has families bury their loved ones with some coins in their mouth and a little youthful grave robbing puts some cash in Lorr and his friends’ pockets. While this is going on, we’re also following the life of a dedicated young teacher and the vacationing hunk (he kind of looks like a Thai Colin Hanks) courting her. They visit a local spot with a bad reputation called Leang’s Birds Hill. The place has seen a couple deaths and has a supposedly haunted cave where the sound of birds can be heard, although the area is shockingly void of our avian friends. The young romantics experience the noise first-hand and exit the cave after quickly being unable to pinpoint the source. Nightmares begin to plague the teacher and when she shares with Lorr and his friends that she had visited the locally avoided spot, the kids realize there’s some more money they can get their candy-buying hands on. They dig up a body which is in far better condition than it has any right to be and make one hell of a score. Two things happen when one enterprising child-creep removes the gold coin from the corpse’s mouth. 1) It starts storming and 2) the strange pot Lorr dug up behind a temple begins blowing green smoke into the air. Lorr places his loot in the pot he found and Mol spies him in the act of depositing his ill-gotten goods. Of course, grave desecration will not go unanswered by the world beyond and a ghostly presence begins popping up and terrorizing the little shits with fatal results. Mol steals the antique coins and heads off to sell them which puts a hamper on Lorr’s plans to return them to the corpse after his friend is found dead. The dead child’s grieving mother gifts the coins he had to the teacher and she gets her ass possessed by the wandering spirit and has her carry out his vengeance come nightfall. More bad shit happens, the ghost makes Lorr his little minion and more people get seriously hurt as the ghost’s malevolence plays out. Fortunately for everyone, an elderly shaman has just returned to town to battle the evil spirit making a mess of everything... but not really... he dies shockingly quick (offscreen, to boot!). Thai Colin Hanks gets his hands on the shaman’s wand (No. Don’t be gross.) and most of the surviving cast set out to stop the evil. Glowing red hypno-eyes, echoing creepy voice, mangled child hands, worms, murderous animated ghost birds and some other wonderful weirdness pop up in this admittedly over-long but enjoyable enough bit of supernatural shenanigans from Thailand.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
On Halloween night in the year of our lord 1977, late-night host Jack Delroy (the irreplaceable David Dastmalchian) looks to save his failing show Night Owls (ratings have plummeted after the loss of his wife one year prior) by throwing together a sensationalistic special. Said special features an exclusive interview with a famed parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell and the subject of her recent book, Lily. This subject is a teenage girl who holds the infamous honor of being the sole survivor of a Satanic church’s mass slaughter following a siege by the United States government. Yeah. This ain’t gonna go well. All hell slowly breaks loose when evil is unleashed and a standard possession flick eventually deteriorates into Satanic havoc in front of the Night Owls studio audience and the viewers at home. I won’t say much more because it’s still relatively new and I don’t feel like slipping into spoiler territory if I don’t need to but there is more going on in the background, keeping things more interesting than the admittedly V/H/S segment vibes. Ian Bliss steals the movie as the cocky skeptic who has dedicated his professional life to exposing frauds. I know there’s a big stupid and overblown elephant in the room so here goes; I loved it but I’m not an artist so I could give two fucks about AI generated title-cards and I’m also a fan of crappy cgi so you probably shouldn’t listen to me. If ya can’t see past the minor bits and fixate on it enough to have it ruin your time with a fun flick, well, that’s your choice. And hey, my hometown of Berwyn gets a shout out.
⭐️1/2
City stresses send a group of Atlanta friends out into the remote wilds of Pine Hollow Forest. A helpful phone conversation opens things between Nia and her sister about how Nia needs to take this camping trip to do some healing. So she, some lovable lunk named Ken and her two lady friends ignore the warnings of a seemingly insane forest ranger (hearing voices is never a good thing) and proceed into the infamous area. The ranger’s cabin looks suspiciously like a well-kept downtown apartment and is also occupied by the intense ranger’s saucy wife. Camping can be a shitty time in the best of situations but it’s even worse when the supernatural (maybe) is creeping around and everyone in your little group seems like they packed for a night over in a city hotel as opposed to the middle of nowhere. Stories of missing bodies and Satanic rituals are well known and ignored. Also, the ranger’s warnings of whispers and spirits ain’t getting in the way of Nia’s birthday camping experience. Nia keeps saying that this is exactly what she needed and it’s her birthday… me thinks we hear so much of the same shit because the script simply read “ad-lib here”. They immediately hear voices in the dark and decide to call it a night and not to worry about it. It’s her birthday, so they follow her advice to get some sleep. Nia has intense nightmares/visions, someone dressed in black watches the quartet, the dialogue is a rambling mess, their attempt to leave after the first night is halted by a car that’s not going anywhere and one of ‘em vanishes during the second night. Mia shares her real reason for wanting to come back to this spooky area of Georgia and it has to do with a séance and a mysterious death of a good Christian boy. A two-year time jump closes things on a baffling note and then hits you with a second flash of stupidity. It fits well with the complete pointlessness of everything. This feels like a group of people on vacation realized they had a camera and a setting to film a movie. I’m fine with that, that has lead to some amazing low-fi curios. Unfortunately, it also feels like nobody had any idea what they wanted to do and just had a ninja costume from a big and tall shop to use as a “special” effect. A lack of enthusiasm and abundance of abrasive people put the viewer in a strangle hold that almost leads to tapping out. There are some golden nuggets of dialogue like: “That’s what the woods does. It woods.”, our main character pronounces “therapy” in the best way possible (in one scene she blesses our ears with it multiple times) and cheapjack charm like that ninja-suited villain is hanging around and getting a grin out of me every so often but it’s all mostly an ambling excursion into the boredom that most camping trips offer. You won’t believe it’s only an hour long and not in a good way.
aka Revenge of the Colossal Man/The Terror Strikes
⭐️⭐️
Following his giant ass tumbling down into the Hoover Dam, most believe Glenn “The Amazing Colossal Man” Manning to be dead. His sister Joyce believes otherwise and feels a string of missing food trucks may point in the favor of her belief. She is proven right, Glenn did survive his 700-foot fall but he is now brain damaged and facially disfigured, feeding off of stolen food trucks unfortunate enough to pass through his stomping grounds in Mexico. A giant footprint seals the deal and the military steps in to get the giant back in their hands. They drug a truckload of food and capture the 60-foot man, then bring him back to the USA. The government pretty much washes their hands of the situation, pointing at every other department as being in control of the situation. This leads to them storing the poor sap in an unused airport hangar as they try to figure out what to do with him. After an extended flashback of how we got to this point in big man’s life, utilizing footage from the prior entry, the dude escapes and unleashes some superimposed damage on the airport. Luckily, they put him down before he can cause too much trouble and chain his ass up in manacles, keeping him under close watch. A doctor is flown in to see if there is any hope for the monstrous former military man but all tests seem to point to it being a lost cause. Of course, the colossal man escapes again but doesn’t really get into that much trouble. The poor guy gets reminded of his humanity by his sister and finally puts himself out of his misery as the film limps to its end. There’s not much action in this one but it’s not without the usual Bert I Gordon charm, it even shifts to color as the skull-faced lug electrocutes himself on some power lines.
⭐️⭐️1/2
A short horror that was attached to the 3 Doors of Horrors stream on Tubi. A security guard at an industrial site is haunted by a little ghost girl who needs his help. He sees her around his home and then psychically sees her past which wasn’t a good one. Luckily, with the little specter’s assistance, he’s able to bring her closure and make sure the scumbags responsible for her early ending are held accountable. It ain’t much but Azman Hassan is a likable lead and everything is properly wrapped up by the close.
