⭐️⭐️
Based on a hit game that I have never played. It’s not the game’s fault, it’s been a good amount of time since I’ve picked up a controller to do anything but pause a movie or switch to a different streaming service. Now doing my late night YouTube rabbit holes, I have come across some gameplay videos but I usually only make it about thirty seconds through those until it’s off to a documentary about Amazonian megafauna, so I really have no basis of knowledge for what this movie is all about. This is just a long-winded way of me saying, I’m coming into this like I would any random horror film I stumble upon. Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland from Arrow) is a newly certified mortician at River Fields Mortuary. Her socially awkward boss, Raymond Delver (the always welcome Paul Sparks), knows that there’s some awful shit brooding inside the building with the basement seemingly the main hub of unsavory activity. Usually, Raymond would tackle all nighttime work with Rebecca focusing on the work during the daylight hours but an emergency brings the newbie into a late hours shift and throws her right into a supernatural nightmare scenario. Confused as to why she has been directed to embalm and then cremate her “charge”, the horrific and fresh injuries on the body are also concerning. But a job is a job and especially this freshly into a job, nobody asks too many questions. Even if the same odd itinerary is assigned to every corpse she is dealing with during her unexpected shift. Rebecca has personal problems as well which the evil is going to be able to manipulate with an endgame of making the young woman a proper vessel for possession. There’s rituals to attend to and tasks that go beyond the usual body preparation to keep the sinister shenanigans at bay, but being a novice at battling the forces of darkness is a dangerous game. Raymond is there to shine some light on Rebecca’s current situation and there’s convenient tapes located in the storage basement to assist with the banishment of a demon but it’s gonna be some rough waters. The dead are restless, violence is intensifying and the shadows are growing deeper. Plenty of by-the-number horror beats are hit and I’m guessing that honoring the inspiration for the film leads to some rather clumsy plotting. All I’m saying is needlessly complicated puzzles make more sense in gameplay and don’t translate well to the cinematic universe. I’ve also never successfully banished a demon so what the fuck do I know? The minimal cast is fine and there’s some suitably spooky bits but again, I have no frame of reference to add any disappointment to how things are presented. There’s just an abundance of familiarity especially in those dramatic flashbacks to Rebecca’s trauma and general sense of pointlessness as the film comes to a close. As with most games I have taken the time to play, the aesthetics hit the proper vibe but the story leaves much to be desired.
aka The Everglades Killings
NOTHING! NO STARS! I HAVE BEEN TO THE NON-DISNEY PARTS OF FLORIDA AND THIS IS THE WORST THING TO COME OUT OF AMERICA’S WANG
As awful as the idea of doing any Spring Break celebrations may seem to me, I guess I can understand the appeal of a bunch of youths deciding to gather together and party. This may have never been something that tempted me even in my more adventurous days but I get it. You’re young, look good shirtless, like to drink and don’t mind coming home with some new bacterial nightmares plaguing your genitals. I’ve always been a little old fashioned, so my Spring Breaks mainly consisted of staying up late and watching movies but I’m not here to share my sad college days with you. No, if we were following along with those exploits there would be no movie unless it involved a younger Brennan sleeping past noon and forgetting to clean up his empty beer bottles. Nobody would watch that and nobody should watch that. So instead we’re following a group of mildly attractive folks as they journey to Florida to get their party on. Not my scene but I get it. What I don’t get is how the most idiotic of drunken idiots would ever decide ”Hey! It sure is fun partying on this beach but what would really be a good time is taking this celebration into the Everglades!” Even if you’re from some podunk town in Wyoming, you should be aware that the Everglades are riddled with things that can and will kill you. And it’s not even the creatures that call the place home (not even counting the legendary skunk ape and backwoods lunatics that probably haunt the woods), the terrain is a fucking death trap in and of itself. So, as I set out to watch some college cuties meet their maker, there was very little sympathy for the predicament they threw themselves into. They’re also the kind of guys that say philosophical things like “write poetry with your dick”, ask tough questions like “Are you a pussy or are you a bro, dawg?” and don’t stress about being a couple months late for their period. Real salt of the earth folks. An opening news report lets us know that a couple Vermont college girls vanished and there was a python capturing competition, there’s a quick flash of watching those two gals get slaughtered and then it’s off to the bar for some clappin’ cheeks and wet T-shirts. SPRING BREAK!!!! The bartender (Linnea Quigley) at the joint they usually hit up when they’re in the area for SPRING BREAK!!! tells them they need to go visit the Everglades and take an airboat tour. Because they’re morons, they leave the relative safety of the bar to go bring their shenanigans to the dangerous patch of American wilderness. There’s also the reward for capturing a snake to think about and the fact that the reward for grabbing the reptile will practically cover their trip. Off they go with their horny and less than reliable airboat captain who ignores the fact that a storm is on the way because money and the promise of some college boobs would make any red-blooded Floridian turn a blind eye to any environmental dangers. They plan to head on back but the horny old coot has a heart attack and nobody knows how to operate an airboat so they abscond to land. Everyone screams over everybody else which makes for some really unbearable bits of upset derps trying to shout louder than their costars. They find a seemingly abandoned home, make their way in, get the generator running and help themselves to moonshine that’s lying around. Can we start killing these dopes? It’s revealed the horny old coot faked his heart attack and he’s met by his two idiot sons for some college-kid hunting. Unfortunately, they take their time so we can be treated to more shouting and partying. The abandoned house has everything, including a boombox and a shower. Two girls go off to complain to each other and the slaughtering begins. Various others go their separate ways to shower or screw and meet the business end of a blade or whatever convenient murder weapon is around. This goes on for a while and it’s not at all entertaining. There’s boobs but they all belong to folks who look like they’re employed by a rural Wisconsin strip club and performances range from clientele of said strip club to folks banned from said strip club. There’s also butt rape so if that’s your thing, just watch Deliverance because Burt Reynolds is in that. Even the butt-naked upside-down crucifixion that brings everything to a close could not save this shit stain on the underpants of American-made horror.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Sara is a survivor. She’s discovered wandering around the middle of nowhere, covered in blood and holding not only a spear fashioned from a branch but the severed head of something that ain’t human. Her rescuers manage to gently disarm her and bag the severed head of whatever the hell it is Sara has possession of. They hear screaming coming from the woods and get Sara into their car, getting the hell out of the area and transporting Sara to a hospital. The girl has been missing for a bit after a camping trip with her dodgeball team went bad, Sara’s sister Sam is happy as hell she’s alive as is the law officer who has been working on her case. Unfortunately Sara doesn’t remember what exactly happened but it’s coming back in flashes and her missing friends are still being looked for. Against her sister’s wishes, Sara decides to help the local law search for her friends and tells them they’re going to need bigger guns. Something attacked she and her friends and Sara feels it’s necessary for them to recover the bodies of the people she knows are deceased. With “monsters” not being legally acknowledged, the state is looking to charge Sara with the murders of her friends. Now Sara has to convince people that monsters exist and that she is not a lunatic who killed her friends. PTSD and survivor’s guilt weigh on our hero and a reporter begins to dig into things, convinced there may actually be things that go bump in the night. Thank god there’s an actual corpse to examine and it’s one of the most important scientific discoveries in centuries… and that brings us just shy of the halfway point. The final girl’s flashbacks have an odd reenactment vibe to them which works well at making them feel somewhat surreal. It’s an interesting choice in an intriguing film with a bunch of interesting choices from story structure to focus. Some awkward performances and dialogue don’t take away from anything because it’s such a different kind of monster movie that I’m pretty damn impressed even with its budget working against it. More importantly, our lead Caylin Sams is great, the direction is confident, most of the sparse humor really lands and it never feels like it’s wasting anyone’s time. Movies like this are why I will watch any damn independent horror film that comes my way. Sometimes, you give the right film a chance.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brain dead vanity project from writer, director and lead actor Marco Antonio Andolfi. When his bejeweled cross is stolen from him, Marco desperately attempts to retrieve it. He has been cursed by a satanic sect who worship a Bigfoot-looking demon called Aborin and without his cross (given to him by his mother before she was murdered by Aborin) he turns into the shittiest looking werewolf in film history. Marco spends a chunk of the running time jumping around bare assed and murdering the seedy criminal underbelly responsible for the theft. Blissfully inept in every way.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Did you ever think that Robocop would have been a far better movie if it had idiotic villains, a quarter of the budget and instead of a heroic police officer it turned a pretty good tennis player (she did finish second) into its android hero after she's mortally injured by said idiots? If you have answered "yes" then you are invited to my birthday party and you'll also enjoy this dumb movie. The Cartel is a terrorist criminal syndicate which has begun spreading its cancer throughout Neo Tokyo. The neutered police force can't seem to do a damn thing and the Cartel just grows in power. A young scientist has been working on a top secret project which may be able to curb the growth of the evil syndicate. Unfortunately, said syndicate has caught wind of his secret project and set out to destroy his work. Even more unfortunate, he and his fiancée (tennis star Kaoru) stop by the lab when the Cartel drops in to cause some destruction. The Cartel's command team called Phantom make short work of the guards and lab technicians. One overacting psychopath attempts to rape Kaoru but some fighting allows her and her fiancé to flee. They don't get far when the Cartel's super powered psychic (ok) named Amadeus shows up and uses his telekinetic powers to stop them. This leads to an exploded laboratory and two missing bodies. Half a year passes and Neo Tokyo moves on. The laboratory explosion has been forgotten by the media and the police force but one cop who was friends with the engaged couple has refused to move on. This puts him in the sights of Phantom. He's attacked on his drunken stumble home and would have gotten his ass murdered if it wasn't for the timely appearance of some sort of.... lady battle cop! With a costume resembling what would happen if an arts & crafts enthusiast got his hands on a motocross uniform, lady battle cop saves the detective and almost takes out Phantom. Luckily for the shit-heels, Amadeus saves their asses again. Realizing they're going to need to up their game, Phantom gets their hands on a neutron radiation cannon (ok). Before we get to the climax we're shown just how Robocrap was born. It turns out the couple managed to make it to a secret lab before the main lab blew to high heaven. Realizing that she was not long for this world, Kaoru offered her body to her husband-to-be to complete his project. Successfully saving her in a removable robo-suit, he died soon after. Now she's out for revenge and ready to bring justice to the corrupted Neo Tokyo. Obvious backstabbing, an official Lady Battle Cop song and a final telekinesis-laced battle all set us up for a sequel which sadly never materialized. That's a damn shame. Idiocy is in every frame of this cheapjack rip-off but I'll be damned if I didn't have a blast. Shitty special effects and an inability on every characters part to make good decisions allows any dragging to zip by. There's also a super buff guy who uses the power of his mind to throw steel beams and I'm pretty sure the robot cop had a cheap-ass earring. Yeah. That's a big thumbs up.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
In a small Irish village (where Bram Stoker allegedly got his inspiration for Dracula) a likable group of road workers accidentally unleash an ancient Irish vampire when they destroy the pile of rocks which have served as his grave/prison for centuries. The locals are none too pleased they’re destroying the land for a new bypass, so the spooky happenings are first blamed on a bit of protest. It doesn’t take long for the blood drinking to begin and shit gradually spirals out of control. There’s some cool touches like the vampire feeding by causing his victims to hemorrhage and having the blood flow his way, a fairly intelligent way to keep the vampirism contained, intriguing use of a leg, an underutilized (to good effect) boogeyman, John Lynch as the local undertaker and a winning mix of likable characters and genuine humor.
aka The Wound Wood
⭐️⭐️
An arborist and her son journey to the remote estate of a reclusive weirdo to fell some trees. Ellie is currently shaken over the loss of her baby daughter a year prior. The kind of shaky that has her throwing booze in her water bottle in a poor attempt to hide her shame from her son. Her son Wyatt seems a bit troubled thanks to hallucinations of some sort of creature, which he was having before the baby girl’s death but grief helps nothing heal if it’s just festering. This grief could explain his erratic behavior (again, he was seeing something before the death) and him being a prick (but he is a teenage boy and they’re moody pricks anyways) but the property owner would not be out of place wearing a flashing neon sign that reads “ULTERIOR MOTIVES” when it comes to the task he has put in front of the mother and son team. I’d be suspicious clearing out the sinisterly named Wound Woods. Said task causes something supernatural to stir and a very old tragedy to be unearthed that links everyone together. Ellie begins to question just why someone in her profession was necessary to tear down some perfectly healthy trees and it’s further unsettling because the spot was once an open-air children’s theater. Fuck that noise. Wyatt is dead set on his belief that something supernatural murdered his sister while Ellie is growing more frustrated with his inability to accept the reality, no matter how sudden an unfair, of his sister’s death. She’s not really one to talk when it comes to grief management as noted earlier, most doctor’s since the seventies have not prescribed alcoholism to deal with a case of the glums. Needless to say, there’s plenty of brooding from everyone as the paranormal aspect plays around the periphery and may all be in Wyatt’s troubled noggin. Wyatt runs off and Ellie finally gets some answers. The cast is fine and the setting works for whatever spookiness they’re going for but the burn is very slow and not really worth the payoff. It’s a bit more on the unintentionally silly part than scary ghost chills is aiming for. We’ve also seen similar material handled better elsewhere. The two-person crew here is just like the abatement crew from Session 9 in that they really take their sweet-ass time and are easily distracted for someone with a looming deadline dangling above their heads. No great shakes but at least it tried… and then kept trying… and then got sillier… and then just wouldn’t end.
