⭐️
The old town of Sabattus sits quietly in scenic Maine. Standing in this peaceful town is a house where the owner claims supernatural occurrences play out on the regular. Shadow figures, balls of light and the usual sounds of inhuman occupants plague the place. Youthful paranormal investigator Nate Breslin investigates the odd reports and is certain ghosts are roaming the halls. They do that stupid shit where the Kinect camera recording captures the shape of a human form but, as anyone with even the slightest inclination towards technology will tell you, these cameras are set to map human form and will pick them up in any pattern and inanimate object they come across. No, that’s not the specter of some dead dude humping a lamp or crawling up a wall, it’s just technology trying its damndest to do the job it’s programmed for. Ok. Deep breaths. Not even ten minutes in. Indecipherable audio, light reflections off of surfaces and orbs that are definitely bugs also paint a picture of a deeply haunted home. Hey, the history of the area is always interesting. There’s talk of spirits from “wagon days”, Bigfoot, UFOs, shapeshifters, elementals and Pukwudgies… we see none of this but they do get talked about. There’s another investigator hanging around by the name of Karac St. Laurent and I think he’s maybe fifteen years old. He definitely looks like someone I used to drink beer behind the 7/11 with. He calls himself a cryptozoologist and that’s not a recognized profession… he’s my kinda people. It’s teenagers investigating the paranormal and getting excited about things people take for granted, like dust and HVAC. People claim they attempt to debunk things but I’m gonna call bullshit on that. They’re not as annoying as some of these guys but that’s about the only praise I can send its way.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Invisible aliens, who have already occupied the moon, set their sights on planet Earth when they begin to get nervous over the human race’s nuclear advancements. Tasking an elderly nuclear scientist, who has humanitarian dreams of peace, with delivering the message to world leaders: you have 24 hours to surrender or face an unstoppable and deadly invasion! Laughing off the old man’s warning, the planet gets a rude awakening when the unseeable enemy inhabits the bodies of the recently deceased and begins to cause havoc all over the world. A small group of scientists (including the previously ridiculed gentleman) and a no-nonsense Air Force major (John F’n Agar) hide out in an underground bunker, rushing to figure out a way to stop the seemingly invincible force. John Carradine is killed off immediately in hilarious fashion but turns back up briefly as an alien-possessed cadaver. Made on the cheap (actors perform their own stunts, an exposition-happy narrator rambles throughout and the alien menace, along with their spaceships, are conveniently invisible), it’s still a B-Movie hoot. There’s some oddly effective shambling corpses and sound-guns save the day... fucking sound-guns!!! A bargain basement science fiction blast for those cheap dates out there.
⭐️⭐️
I’ve pretty much avoided anything attached to Fred Vogel after finding his August Underground series far more annoying than disturbing. It’s not his fault, extreme horror usually tries my patience due to the initial shock wearing off within the first 15 minutes. I mean, it may be his fault but people I respect seem to enjoy those three insufferable movies and that’s fine. Different strokes and such. So, I’m not big on Vogel and I’ve never gone out of my way to track down anything else he’s done. That brings us to Redsin Tower and my dangerous knack for beginning to fixate on something that holds just a morsel of interest. Like a vomit and gore covered rat just scratching at the inside of my skull. Those people who were singing praises about the AU series told me that Redsin wasn’t all that great because it lacked the edge. What I was hearing was that Mr. Vogel wasn’t able to distract the audience with sexual deviance and graphic violence so he would have to rely on filmmaking capabilities. For some reason, that did it for me. I wanted to know what the man was capable of. The second issue came when I was looking at the price of this OOP flick and no matter what anyone may say about me or my bank account, if you’re not some weirdo under-seen flick from India or Indonesia, I won’t be spending more than 20 bucks on you. So, to the back burner it went… but that rat never stopped scratching. I’d like to wrap up this little sojourn with an exciting and interesting tale about how I finally got my hands on it but it’s not at all that exciting or interesting. It finally popped up on a torrent site and I downloaded it. I’m sorry, that’s just real life and it’s also the perfect boring story for a film of this caliber. A young woman breaks up with her boyfriend after they bang and she’s pretty down about it. The moody music playing over the opening credits as she takes a bath and looks sad lets us know that it’s an emotionally trying time. Her ex calls her and leaves a distressing voicemail, he may be slipping towards a case of the crazies but he’s also about as threatening as Stephen Geoffreys in Fright Night mixed with a British toddler, it’s more laughable than anything. Kim’s (the recently single sad lady) horrible friend Becky comes over to be really obnoxious and assure her she did the right thing. Becky convinces Kim to go party with her while her sad ex writes angrily on a legal pad and burns a picture of them… uh oh. Again, if it didn’t look like a slight breeze would hurt this derp, it may be intimidating… instead, I’m just snickering at this limp noodle playing tough. The idiot rats on the party they’re planning on going to and borrows his friend’s gun in a plot to get his girl back. Does it work? No. Of course not. This dude blows goats. I’m really rooting for this shit-stain to die. The teens that want to get their party on decide to go hang out at the creepy Redsin Tower because it doesn’t cost a thing and has a creepy-ass history. Unfortunately, sad ex follows them on his bicycle (why would anyone think bike riding could be menacing?) and his mental stability is beginning to fracture. It gets worse when he confronts Kim and her friends at a gas station and gets his ass handed to him. Good for them. After what feels like forever, the group of dummies make it to the Redsin Tower and set up in one of the chambers located in the cavernous tower dungeon. We then get a flashback about the true tortures the alchemist Redsin took part in when the chunky member of the group gets possessed and tells the tale of cannibalism, possession and pure evil. After that brief foray into impressive graphic splat, the beer bong gets busted out and we’re back to the uninteresting stuff. Hit the party montage to music that’s surprisingly not as bad as I was expecting from a Toe Tag production. Chunky boy seems normal, so I guess we’ll just forget about it. Ex grabs a hatchet, people separate, the supernatural presence decides to reveal itself and folks finally begin to die… it just takes a bit. Inane dialogue pollutes the film and fails at being humorous or interesting which is a shame because there’s so damn much of it before anything engrossing happens. The film is a chore to get through but it was also a chore to find so I guess it all makes sense in the end. The violence is solid but the time spent with unlikable and boring people was a bold and stupid choice. There’s about twenty minutes left when the damn thing finally picks up steam. Hey, at least I enjoyed it more than August Underground but I’ve also enjoyed back alley prostate exams more than that series, so it’s pretty faint praise. Dumb fucking ending.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Arizona birthed something foul. A reporter named Steve is obsessed with an old Native American legend… the story of Natas and a riddle that needs to be solved. In Arizona, some sacred wise man waits for someone with “the faith of 100 eagles” to solve the riddle of the Devil’s sentry… Natas. Steve’s boss fires him because he ain’t buying Steve’s story and his girlfriend is concerned about him throwing away his career and personal life on his insane quest. Steve doesn’t listen to the plausible concern of the woman who loves him and journeys out into the mountains to find the 200-year-old shaman and unravel the mystery. Steve finds the elderly sage easily and is given some help is discovering Natas’ tower and freeing the trapped souls that reside there… so, I guess Steve isn’t a complete dick. Our hero is given a magic necklace and encouraged to get the fuck going and get to freeing them souls because the time is upon us where it will be too late to do anything and damnation is waiting for more than a couple poor saps. Steve heads out to find the tower, ignores the “stay away” advice of a gas station attendant who reveals himself to have a “spooky” distorted voice after Steve leaves and immediately runs into trouble when he hits the desert. His water turns to sand, he stumbles into a ghost town full of non-threatening old-timey zombies with distorted voices, gets thrown in jail to await his hanging, has some indecipherable conversations with the townsfolk (the crap audio and spooky monster voices are not compatible), is freed by a mystery person on horseback with magic powers and lucks upon a carved-tablet/mirror which gives him the proof he needs to convince the people back home he wasn’t insane. Convince them he does, and a group of idiots trek out to the desert to gather facts and report it all to the world. They get back to the ghost town and camp out. The terror hits hard and fast; there’s a lizard in a can of peaches, murder and a whole lotta lookin’ around. Brief nudity, a skeletal ghoul and a decapitation add some pulse. It comes to a close with Steve and his gal looking like background characters in an Italian Mad Max ripoff and confronting their fate on the treacherous mountain-dwelling of Natas… oh my god! Hold that name to a mirror! The overly-happy ending just adds a nice and cheesy “fuck you” to everything. The droning score, persistent winds and sun-bleached cinematography encourages quick slips to the world of napping but I think that was Natas’ plan all along. We’re lulled into something comfortable that ends with a hilarious confrontation with an incredibly laid back evil one. This movie ain’t good but it’s my kind of “ain’t good” and it beckons me every so often like a siren dwelling far from any land I once called home.
⭐️1/2
Found footage of a desperate husband’s last attempt to save his wife from the malicious entity taking possession of her. Anna’s past in Salem definitely has something to do with it and footage shows that prior to the awfulness, Anna’s fears about her soon-to-be born baby being a female are weighing heavy on her. Her husband/videographer David may not understand why his wife is freaking out, but at least he’s not being a dick and offers his support and sympathy. With this small bit of backstory hinted at, text hits the screen about the increase in exorcisms over the last decade. Years pass and we open up on David and a priest talking and see that Anna is in full-on self-harm and moving like a monster mode. This then brings us to January 13th, 2019 and a team of exorcists arrive at David’s home, recording everything. They’ve been sent by the church to fight the good fight against the evil now calling the suburban family’s living space a home. David lets them know he thinks the church is garbage but his wife believes in it and wants their help. He also wants them to know he’d much rather speak with Father Mark (the priest we briefly saw in the beginning) but he’s been in a coma since leaving the house. Deacon John (who’s filming everything) distrusts David but his trepidations are dismissed by the other men of the cloth. The surly exorcist briefly meets Anna and decides they need to get started immediately and, more importantly, they need to figure out the name of the demon who is now wearing David’s wife like a form-fitting skin suit. An annoying exorcism follows and chugs along as the actors struggle to be convincing. Anna spits a nail into Deacon John’s eye which is pretty funny and Anna puts on a child voice which is pretty stupid. The dopes turn against each other and bicker, the film’s worst actor arrives in the form of a family friend charged with and failing at watching Anna and David’s daughter and things finally get a little fun when the demon-lady starts acting like a J-Horror ghost that’s really into violence and cursing. Dumb as fuck and only minorly worth sitting through.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A man rocking a tuxedo and a horrific blow-up-doll-mask by the name of Arthur stalks two women in a mall. Arthur follows the friends home but learns quickly he’s made a mistake this time around… but that’s the most basic summation one can give of this pure slice of fever-dream-horror. Musically inclined and existing in a reality of sung-dialogue/soliloquy and nightmare-logic quick-edits, Possibly in Michigan is a pure representation of why some people should not fall asleep and if it ran longer than it’s 12-minute runtime, it may have overstayed its welcome. Every time I watch Possibly in Michigan, it hits like a malicious slap from your favorite relative.
⭐️1/2
A little girl supposedly drowns in the lake during a family camping trip near her family home, grabbed by the monster she’s been having nightmares of. Twenty-five years later and the family is mostly in shambles. The father has passed away, the mother (Dee fuckin’ Wallace) doesn’t believe her daughter is dead and doesn’t seem capable of much beyond blankly watching television all day and grieving, her oldest brother Lucas is a drug addict who blames himself for his sister’s death and is a distant father to his daughter Zoey. Her other brother Jack is the only family member who seems to be doing ok, with a job at a closing theater and a girlfriend but he’s still dealing with a shit-ton of family baggage. The family still celebrates the dead sister’s eighth birthday and it’s as awkward as one would imagine. Whatever the hell the supernatural creature is starts eating away at the family’s mental state and Jack begins to suspect Zoey may be in danger. When the family goes back to the lake to spread some ashes, the creature shows itself and now nobody in the family can claim it doesn’t exist. There’s a whole bunch of trauma on display mixed in with the mental illness which fits well with the whole metaphors and monsters angle they’re playing. It’s a solid enough idea just lost in an execution that takes itself way too fucking serious and then fumbles any good grace it’s received as it crawls up its own ass in route to its jumbled climax. Michael fuckin’ Paré shows up as Jack’s uncle who is trying desperately to help the family and Angie Téodora Dick, who stole my heart in Planet of the Sharks, graces us with her presence as Jack’s sweet girlfriend (no Creole accent, unfortunately).
