aka Spooked/The Whispering Dead
⭐️1/2
Abandoned hospital with a checkered past? Check! A team of paranormal investigators? Checkaroo! Plentiful night vision? Check but in green! If you didn’t guess this was found footage by this point, I would like to welcome you to the horror genre and ask why you chose this as your first filmic fright. Also, you should probably buy the first three volumes of my book series, it’ll catch you up in no time! Ettersburg Hospital has a long and dark history involving medical experimentation, supposed telekinesis, a slash-happy patient, suicide, cannibalism and a boiler room fire that claimed the short lives of three young girls. So, there’s plenty of spooky campfire legends to lurk in the shadows of this place. It’s the perfect spot for a small team of ghost hunters putting together a pilot episode for another “reality” show in the long line of paranormal reality shows. The problem is, the three-person crew and three-person cast soon discover that the abandoned hospital grounds are home to more than just a legend and whereas it could have been the violent spirit of the patient that got a little murder-happy or ghosts of the trapped loggers who became cannibals, it decided to land on the trio of ghost kids that came to an end in the boiler room. I don’t know, I would have much rather had the six dopes going up against a group of dead, shambling and wailing cannibal loggers… but I’m old fashioned like that. I would like to apologize. I lied earlier. I mentioned that the six dolts “soon discover”, that’s not actually true. There’s an extended opening of getting to know the team through the predictable sarcasm of the cameraman and the bland whateverness of everyone else. There’s also a caretaker around to give them a tour and share some eerie history. This is followed by an extended amount of time spent with the group as they wander around in the dark, looking for some sort of entertainment to catch on camera. Randomly thrown in between this long buildup is footage of things going to hell for the folks we’re getting to know. So, at least we know something is supposed to happen… eventually. The caretaker is hesitant to let them stay over night and refuses to stay with them to ease any safety concerns, this frustrates the producer but angers the hell out of the actor they hired to be the team leader. He floats the option to just break in and seals the fate of these unlikable/unmemorable goofs… eventually. That’s that. Nothing special but nothing too offensive. If your thought after watching Grave Encounters was: “Hmmm. I wish this was more boring.” Then you’ll be happy with this bad boy, everyone else can just throw it on the pile with all those other discarded shaky-cam horrors you’ve seen and forgotten.
aka NO EXIT
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A couple thieves target the wrong house and their score ends up being the lair of a very dangerous serial killer. The kind of monster that holds his prey in a basement dungeon and has no qualms about slaughtering a mother in front of her daughter. That kinda guy. So, the two likable thieves Ollie and Blair are looking at the final score. Thirty years old and ready to ride off into the sunset, leaving the life of crime behind. Their initial score goes wrong when the cheating wife comes home with her booty call and then her cuckold husband comes home too. It’s chaotic and pretty damn hilarious… until it ends with a double homicide and a failed suicide. Ollie gets pinched and the two are now in debt to a dangerous man after he pulls some strings to get Ollie out of the clink. This forces Blair to join up with her brother Connor and his lovable dimwit partner Riley to rob a supposedly empty summer home. Connor refuses to work alongside Ollie after a bad experience but he manages to get himself invited along for the score. Blair and Riley go looking for Connor after he disappears searching for a way in and Ollie follows them when their communication devices stop working. They soon discover that the windows are reinforced, there’s no way to communicate with the outside, the walls are concrete, all the exits are locked from the outside and every lock appears to be unpickable. Concerning indeed, but the basement has a TV hanging from the ceiling and there’s a collection of DVDs featuring home footage of people getting murdered in that very basement. Ollie takes control much to the chagrin of Connor but survival becomes key and the quartet put the bullshit to the side to find an exit or at least find the jamming device. Making everything worse, the owner is in the house and he’s more than happy to deal with this new batch of prey who have wandered into his den. They make their way to the underground maze on the property and come across signs of the monster’s work and one of his prisoners. Things slide further and further out of control and people start dropping. A wonderfully hilarious and dark script from Viet Nguyen and Chris Dinh (who is excellent as Ollie) has the benefit of being performed by a solid core of actors in the lead roles. It’s amazing to me that for all the love Don’t Breathe receives, the films that it obviously “borrowed” from (this, The Collector and Livid) are superior in every way. A shocking lack of splat may take you out of things if that’s why ya come to a movie but if you have no issue with the absence of graphic violence, you’ll be in for a real sleeper.
⭐️1/2
A troubled young artist is haunted by her own creation but it could just be mental illness working its horrible magic. Leah Garrison creates the titular spooky character for her graphic novel and he soon pops into her world. He’s also played by Stephen McHattie in grey face-paint, so it has that going for it. Leah is prone to hallucinations and past trauma has her agoraphobic and depressed so we can’t trust that the supernatural is actually peeking into our world. McHattie also plays an art curator named Randall Toth who is putting on a show concerning the art of artists who have dealt with depression and wants to showcase her mother’s work. Flashbacks reveal Leah’s mentally ill mother committing suicide after an argument with her daughter so she at least has a reason to act like the awful person she’s acting like. I guess. I don’t know, moody people are annoying. After a nasty talk with her brother, Leah cuts her wrist (not in the life-ending technique but in the teen cutter technique) and rubs it on some paper which creates the Dark Stranger and inspires her to create a dark fantasy tale. So she’s happy for the inspiration… at first. Bad things start going down and she’s blaming the fictional fiend she may or may not have brought into this world. There’s cuts to the lame comic animation, an attractive TA that may hold the key to getting Leah out of her shell, chats with a shrink to fill in some info, poor digital effects to break the tedium and a last-act reveal that answers all questions and is kind of silly. Leah’s papa is played by Enrico Colantoni and I’m always happy to see him (Veronica Mars represent!). The family drama had my eyes rolling but I’m also somewhat of an asshole so you may not want to rely on my opinion. The cast is solid for the most part but everything else is either uncomfortably corny or laughably daft… it’s not a good combo.
⭐️⭐️1/2
I like the idea of a killer mime. I think given the right platform it could work. The warning that opens things up does not instill much hope. Warning: This is a very ridiculous, offensive, irreverent, funny film. If you’re easily offended, or are looking for a polished gem, look elsewhere, or don’t it’s a free country, just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Which I read as “we didn’t make a good movie but uh… we did it on purpose so you’re the asshole for not liking it.” It’s the same thing Troma has been doing for years and I fucking hate Troma. God, I hope I’m wrong. Also, whenever you have to call your own film “funny” it just sounds the alarm that it’s going to be a far stretch from anything considered comedy. God, I really hope I’m wrong. There’s a couple friends watching a film called The Day the Mime Cried, a movie that hasn’t been seen in thirty years. Which leads to some long opening credits and a half-assed song about the killer mime. Reporter Brock Peterson hosts a special report on a killer mime and the dark history of mimes in general tied up like a History Channel special on Bigfoot’s appearance at the last supper… it’s pretty damn funny. A missing child back in the 70s and a failed assassination attempt at the trial of the mime led to the mute maniac escaping. Years later, a car full of teenage stereotypes drive off into the woods and came across the mime doing his shtick on the side of the road. The dickhole of the group throws his hotdog at the mime and seals their fates. They make it to the dickhole’s father’s place in the woods and it appears that the mime is also his father and is more than likely the missing kid. The missing kid’s brother kidnaps a mime and tortures him in his garage and after he gets some information on his sibling, he melts him with makeup remover. Hijinks happen, audio awkwardly drops, Second Line Brewing gets some love, folks are actually slaughtered by mimed weapons (including crushed by that damn invisible box) and a bunch of friends have themselves some fun. I may not have given this one more leeway if I had paid for it but it was a free watch on Tubi so I’m not pissed or anything. Some of the jokes actually land and the “meta” stuff isn’t too annoying… it also never hits those levels of ass that Troma does thanks to how much the Troma Team seems to love toilet humor. I didn’t hate it and the folks making it seem to be having a blast but it still feels a little too long and it only runs an hour. It also gets its own title song as the end credits roll and I’m all for that.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Urban exploration may seem like a great way to kill time but if horror films have taught me anything (and they have, just not sure if the correct lessons were learned), it’s that going where one isn’t welcome is never a great call. 19-year-old Sidney Barber is checking out an abandoned research facility in Arizona in October of 2008. It’s fifteen years later and an unknown source leaks some camcorder footage… this footage will be the last proof we have of her walking this earth. It’s around twelve minutes of found footage shenanigans following a likable leading lady as she slips into an unprecedented nightmare of urban exploring. The facility got into some unsettling bullshit experiments and brought something forth to this realm that should never have seen the light of day. Apparently it’s been harboring in the empty building since the 1950s. An audio clip fills our hero in on this info when it randomly plays after she enters a briefing room and she immediately realizes it’s time to get the fuck out. Fat chance. Locked doors, indistinguishable halls and whatever the hell entity that calls the place home are making escape look more and more like a pipe dream. At least the power still works in the building… not that it will help anything. Pretty damn fun and surprisingly rich for how little time is has to work with. A lean and mean first-person slice of spookiness shows its budget but still manages to offer up enough to get a passing grade.
⭐️
Straight from the void of Gurnee, Illinois, a group of college idiots dick around at a dull suburban home and get on each other’s nerves… my nerves as well. After a stretch of awkward dialogue and annoying behavior, we learn that they have gathered to induct newest member Michelle into their little group of jackasses. After a discussion on their paranoia, one dink tells them he has a plan to build up a new “paranoia”, one they can all share. He tells them to leave for an hour so he can set everything up and they can all partake in the skit (his words, not mine) he has planned. I think this Eastern European weirdo is up to no good. One hour later, they return to the house and immediately hear the sound of a woman crying originating from the basement. One derp goes down and takes an axe to the noggin from what’s assumed to be the vaguely ethnic friend who is now wearing an old hag mask and dressed like a grandmother but like a grandmother in the 1900s who is getting ready for bed or maybe even baking. The friends discover their buddy’s corpse in the basement and realize they may be in some serious trouble. When the psycho dressed up like an old woman appears while their weirdo friend is in the room, they figure out there’s a dangerous stranger amongst them. The plain-ass setting reminds me of several house parties I attended in my youthful days so that was nice, although I never encountered a group of folks this level of boring at any of these gatherings. It’s as good as anything would be shot by a group of apathetic acquaintances with nothing better to do on a Saturday night. Outside of offering next to no entertainment, it can boast one of the dumbest endings in late 90’s micro-budget horror. If you’re reading this, you can probably appreciate the gravity of that statement.
⭐️⭐️
Three local mental patients are denied their circus privileges (I shit you not, that is the reason) so they break out of the asylum and make it to the festivities anyways. Arriving late, they kill three clowns and dress up as them. Now all made up and looking for fun, they terrorize three brothers who have been left home alone for the night. Forever tarnished late eighties horror flick has become a little difficult to find but is not really worth any effort to track down. Director Silva sexually molested 12-year-old lead actor Nathan Forest Winters during the production, making for some uncomfortable viewing. On top of the icky awfulness that took place behind the scenes, the film itself is no great shakes. The three lead actors (including a young Sam Rockwell) are endlessly annoying and the screenplay is a mess. Some wonderfully creepy imagery is captured and the head clown is menacing but unless you have a severe case of coulrophobia this movie may not do anything for you.
