⭐️⭐️
Chris, his girlfriend and their recently single friend head to Europe with plans to meet up with his expatriate older brother Paul in Kiev. The idea is to hit up Moscow where Chris will propose to his lady love. Paul convinces the group to check out Pripyat (the city next to Chernobyl which housed all of the employees and their families and was immediately evacuated when the reactor blew) before heading to Moscow. With their ex-military guide and an adventurous couple, the small group makes their way to the long-abandoned city. A series of misfortunes leaves their guide torn apart, Chris severely injured and the group stuck in an eerie-as-fuck environment. Worse yet, outside of the rabid stray dogs, growing threat of radiation poisoning and wandering bears, something violent and intelligent is stalking the empty buildings of Pripyat. Fairly average horror flick is boosted by its completely chilling setting. Utilizing the tragic piece of history and the fallout from it works to the film’s atmosphere but it is still weighed down by a general vibe of familiarity. I don’t hate it, but it definitely feels like a wasted opportunity.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Youthful idiots decide the best way to end their night of hard-partying and clubbing is to contact the spirit world with a makeshift Ouija board. They get in touch with something which tells them it can tell the future and then spells out “ALL DIE” and names itself “DJINN” (uh oh). Thoroughly spooked, they break the connection early and they’re all pretty much fucked. The frenetic POV-camera-demon begins running through the group almost immediately. The group leaves the club one friend short thanks to a party-ending fall through the building skylight and one by one they go off to that great rave in the sky. It’s discovered one of the kids already has a past tied into the djinn and their landlord knows a whole lot more than anyone should. Well-acted and featuring a paranormal baddie ya don’t get too often, Long Time Dead is an above average early-aughts paranormal slasher. Plus we get Lukas Haas and Marsha Thomason, so I ain’t complaining.
aka Cry Blue Sky
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Reverend Will Smythe (unfortunately not a colonial version of the Chris-Rock-slappin’ musical genius behind such classic albums as Willennium and Big Willie Style) and his followers are chased out of town after the holy man is rightfully accused of adultery and polygamy. They flee into the wild, looking for a new home far away from the self-righteous townsfolk. One of the group, Leah, seems to be a bit touched in the head and harnessing some kind of strange psychic power. Marion, the cuckolded husband, comes back from his long stint in the wilderness and is filled in on all the juicy details of what his wife got into while he was gone, so he starts tracking the bunch. Reunited, he joins up with the group and helps them navigate the dangerous Shawnee territories. They find a patch of valley containing some dilapidated cabins which the native people avoid and decide it’s a good enough place as any to call home. Big mistake. The patch of land has dark energy brewing beneath it and is the territory of some kind of elemental evil. A small child is left at the outskirts of the new settlement and the reverend believes her to be a gift from the mysterious, almost spectral local tribe. Leah gets some bad vibes from the kid but Smythe won’t hear anything negative about her. It doesn’t take long for things to start getting strange and going bad. Super bizarre and incredibly intriguing, Eyes of Fire, is one hell of a surprising 80’s horror flick. Well-harnessed folklore and an atmosphere so thick you could use it as a blanket helps to craft a pleasantly savory serving of unsettling cinema. Faces in the earth, people in the trees, raining bones and an exploding child keep everything nice and weird.
⭐️1/2
A patch of Florida swampland holds significance for the local tribe as a sacred spot where criminals were placed to face judgment. This brings a batch of students, looking to complete their thesis on Native American folklore, to the area. As usual, there are things in this world beyond our modern day science and now this group of youthful “scholars” are up against a supernatural force that could give two shits if these dinks believe in it. Cue some crap digital effects and the sinister spirits of the dead! The locals get tight lipped when the group of archaeologists mention their destination, one big dude offers to take them if their hearts are pure and because they’re just some silly white folks, they assure him they will be fine. Decades earlier a bunch of folks came to a messy end and the place has been off limits since then. This is why their guide won’t take them all the way. He also helpfully warns them to leave before sundown. They don’t even get the chance to ignore that warning. Setting up at an abandoned campground, the gaggle of Caucasians go about their business of setting themselves up to be victims. There’s plenty of exploring of the area and then the most dick-headed of the team comes across old film canisters belonging to the ill-fated campers from the 70s. Conveniently located next to an old projector. The footage (none of which should have survived being unprotected in the Florida swamps for decades) is disturbing and unbelievably features he and his colleagues among the era-appropriate idiots. He decides not to share this with anyone. Sacred sticks are found, canoes are sunk, ghostly voices are heard and past sins are answered for. It takes forever for all of this to go anywhere and it’s not really worth the wait. The cast is capable at least, it looks fine when it’s not experimenting with Se7en edits and there’s some bloody ends for our awful “heroes”. Still, there’s not much here to sink your teeth into and it only kind of cuts loose with like ten minutes left in the runtime. Just watch Death Curse of Tartu is you need a Florida swampland horror film involving dumb white folks getting got by Native American magic.
⭐️
A little kid wanders around the woods and talks to himself about being a YouTube star. At a dilapidated house, he comes across a severed finger and excitedly decides to film it with his phone. He looks around the place and finds a digital camera. Watching it, we follow the journey of a reporter named Lisa Adams who is tracking down a missing person. Nobody wants to talk to her about the missing man except a young dude who lets her know that the last time Chris Wells was seen, he was heading towards the infamous Paul Pry Road. Arriving in the dark, she and her cameraman wander down the forested road and right to the old barn where that little kid found the camera and the severed finger. I don’t think I have to spell this out for ya. According to the chatter, Paul Pry was a serial killer who brought his victims to the abandoned farm. Why they decided to name a road after him is anyone’s guess. That’s city hall for ya. The duo find a human skull and freak out. This discovery has them planning to get out and call the police but when they come across a man tied up to a chair, they stop to help. It is the missing man but the rescue is short-lived when Paul Pry arrives. It doesn’t end well for the cameraman. The kid finds more severed limbs and decides he should probably go back home. We jump back to Chris Wells heading to a comedy show and getting stood up by his girl. If I was his girl, I would have stood up his annoying ass too. Chris picks up his buddy and they smoke some weed while acting like idiots. I guess he’s performing at the show. I feel really sorry for the audience. They drive on for what feels like forever and ad-lib for the benefit of nobody. A local weirdo points them in the direction of Paul Pry Road when they attempt to get some gas and even though it’s not showing up on the GPS, they head out that way. The local warns them about the dangerous Paul Pry (who, I remind you, has a road named after him) and they laugh it off. They follow a woman in distress who has no idea why she’s wandering around the area. She runs off from them and right into the arms of Paul Pry. Chris complains about trying to help this woman and Paul Pry comes for him and his buddy. I should mention that Paul Pry is wearing a cheap Leatherface mask. Not like a knockoff mask either, it’s definitely copyright infringement but I doubt anybody who would give a damn is watching this. The annoying dopes get bludgeoned and caught but unfortunately still find the time to ad-lib. This ends and we jump back to Lisa getting assigned the story. Why it’s built like this, I have no fucking clue but it’s admirable that it needlessly complicated its own pacing for the hell of it. It all eventually catches up to itself and broke-ass Leatherface gets to murder the minimal cast. I appreciate the build on a local legend, even if none of it makes much sense but all of this just feels like an idea that was thrown in the oven but removed before the temperature was even set.
1/2
Paranormal investigators tackle a Chicago apartment building with a sinister past. Legend has it that The Devil occupies the upstairs tenement… at least that’s what the emo-girl psychic says. Her pube-stached teammates take her word for it and get to investigating. Psychic girl has a vision in black and white of the former tenant. There’s knocks coming from a drain and some dope trying his damndest to look concerned. There’s also a whole bunch of establishing shots you’d find in a student film and also a sunbathing cat… that’s probably the best this movie will get. Continuous “artsy” camerawork annoys and the dopey renter sits around in silence and ponders. Tedious haunted house shenanigans attempt to relieve the tedious life of our flashback protagonist but outside of cat footage there ain’t much interest. Unless you’re really into people reading and staring off into the distance, you may tap out. The dope goes crazy in a spectacularly unconvincing manner, the film shifts to color and he has a vision of his own suicide with a pair of scissors. This makes him want to sell the house which I thought was an apartment and then we get black and white footage of traffic and walls. There’s also a drawn out shot of a lightbulb shot from below. We jump back in with the adventures of the amateur ghost hunters and get another psychic flashback. This one is about a woman named Beth who is renting the apartment that was supposedly a house. This too is in black and white because of the past or whatever. Beth also has cats although they are the same cats and seems to enjoy sitting around and pondering just as much as the prior tenant or homeowner or whatever he was. She finds a note on the ground from the dope and she looks concerned. I guess she knew the guy which explains the cats. The note warns her about going in the basement, the dangers of a wooden figure and tells her to get the hell out of the house which is not an apartment but really seems like one. Beth walks around in silence and stares at her reflection. She also stares out a window. Man, I wish I had this much time to do fucking nothing but I’m the idiot watching this so that’s on me. We get to watch Beth smoke a cigarette in real time and I swear those scissors are looking like a good way out of watching this. Beth doesn’t leave and ends up in the basement. She really sucks at following directions. The sound of bells drives her crazy or causes an asthma attack. Emo psychic picks up on one last idiot (lookin’ like a Temu MJF) who came to the apartment or house or whatever and the movie drags itself to the finish line. Fuck me. Thank god there were some cats in this. An ambling waste of time and one more reason to avoid this pretentious fucking city. Go stare out a window instead.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Professor Humberto “El Maestro” Valdez is fired from his Chicano Studies position at the local college. He deals with shitty students and shittier neighbors on a regular basis but the loss of his job gets him sent to a crappy shrink and that quack puts a knife in the hands of a man who is attempting to deny a possible violence growing inside of him. The only student that gives a damn gifts him with a death mask she crafted in her art class and racism greets the poor guy at every turn. Knife + Mask x Environment = Slasher Time! Luckily, all the victims are garbage humans (with a trio of murderous bigots being the worst of the bunch). There’s a sympathetic sheriff tracking the murders and a Cinco de Mayo party in the middle of the woods that can only end badly. It’s cheap, it’s crass and it fits comfortably with those late 80s and early 90s SOV films I love so much. Bonus points added for All Night Long segments that pop up at a few points during the film hosted by the super bubbly Stacy Monroe.
