Devil’s Island (2021) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Three years following the passing of her grandparents, a young woman (who looks like what I’d imagine an elderly producer would think when he hears the term “real hip chickadee”) inherits their small island home in New York’s Thousand Islands area. Samantha awkwardly kills time as she seems completely underprepared for her new living situation but it also doesn’t help that her behavior appears to be under the guiding hand of a writer who has only experienced human actions from barely-remembered sitcoms. After she cruises around a bit in her boat while guitar strumming plays on the soundtrack, she meets some creeper who claims he does boat repair. He looks like every New Yorker you’ve ever seen who works in the kitchen of a greasy pizza joint but since it’s the islands, he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt over his stained undershirt. His name is Mort and I don’t think there has ever been a more synchronous bond of man and name in the history of low-budget horror shot in the Thousand Islands area of New York. Creepy dudes aside, Samantha starts getting freaked out when she hears some strange things on her supposedly vacant property. Maybe. She may also be severely constipated… it’s a little hard to tell. As she investigates (or maybe looks for a laxative) she catches a boat heading away from her home. Now she’s really spooked. The next day she speaks to the sheriff (he’s the one that found her nana and papa’s corpses) and he’s able to slightly convince her that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to late night visitors on the water. Even if said visitor is the large local named Michael, who definitely had the same acting coach as Samantha and looks like he’d be the janitor at the pizza place Mort works in. I really wouldn’t eat any of those slices. More creepiness (or possible constipation) plays out as Samantha meanders around, looking twelve and fifty at the same time and performing normal human tasks (conversations, drinking coffee, breathing) like it’s causing her great distress. A box with worms is left on her dock, Michael’s boat is found abandoned near her house, the sheriff thinks she may have rubbed somebody the wrong way (he’s also a total dick about it), locals watch her with mistrust (or maybe, they too, are having problem BMs), a mute woman hangs around in the background, Mort neglects the idea of “sleeves”, there’s a significance when it comes to wolves, Mort attempts to be helpful (and fails), the mute woman has a cryptic warning (written out, of course) before vanishing (kinda) and Samantha insists on ignoring reason and standing her ground… which leads to some hilarious action. Usually, when films can’t rely on strong performances or an interesting script, they’ll provide some thrills and splatter to keep things chugging along. Devil’s Island makes the bold choice of being completely content in offering nothing and saying “fuck you!” for expecting any different. For some reason, I can really respect that. It’s bad but it’s the surreal kind of bad that’s begrudgingly entertaining. So piss and moan all you want, I’m kind of a fan. My mom recommended this to me and now I’m thinking I may have forgotten her birthday. Not because I’m busy or anything, because I’m a horrible son.

Carnage (1984) (USA)

aka Hell House

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

There’s something very wrong with Andy Milligan and that’s exactly why I love his peculiar library of gutter thrills. If you’ve read Jimmy McDonough’s irreplaceable The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, then you know how the man’s wretched past inspired his wretched working days and eventually lead to his wretched death. It’s a fascinating look at the power a shitty mother has in developing an awful human who, for some reason, decided to be a filmmaker. Outside of a few dramatic pieces steeped in an odd level of unearned pretentiousness, Milligan stuck to horror that ran through themes of family rot, mental decay and a general nihilism for anything that had the tenacity to breath on this planet. He also utilized handmade period piece costuming, church basement spook show gore effects and scripts that were already pretty dated by the time of conception. It sounds like a train wreck you’re being forced to watch by a drunk nun who is also your uncle in drag… and it is but it’s completely unlike anything else I’ve seen. Well, a Milligan film is like everything else festering in low budget hell but it’s being crafted by Milligan so nothing else is like it. I don’t know if that makes sense and I doubt I should care. I’m sure Milligan wouldn’t have given a fuck, he was probably too busy planning on choking out his nephew. Carnage is Andy Milligan pissing all over marriage. Gay, straight, horse… I don’t think Andy cared. Before the opening credits hit, a groom shoots his wife in the head while they embrace and then the dopey dink turns the gun on himself. They’re in their wedding clothes and in their own home listening to that toe tapping hit The Wedding March. It’s also all consensual and done out of love. Things are not well in Staten Island. Three years pass and a newlywed couple (Carol and Jonathan) move into the home where the murder suicide played out. Fresh starts being what they are, the couple are excited for their new life together… Andy Milligan laughs and spits in all four of their eyes at the same time. There’s something wrong in the house and no it’s not the cluttered interior design and uncomfortable furniture, the spirits of those dead people are doing terrifying things as soon as the couple moves in. Phonographs play by themselves, the stove turns itself on, a discarded bubble bath burps and a home phone hangs itself up… please, just say to yourself “It’s only a movie.” I heard it helps if you repeat it. The couple survive the super exciting supernatural murder attempt of haunted gas stoves and closed windows but blame it on faulty kitchen appliances or maybe Carol’s forgetfulness. She disagrees but she’s also a woman so why would the mustachioed men listen to her? Strange things continue to happen but why focus on that when you can focus on the rocky relationship between Jonathan’s pregnant sister and awful mother. That way you don’t have to produce any dime-store special effects and you can focus your static camera on the arguments. Thanks, Andy! Jonathan (who looks like Albert Eskinazi if he were being played by everyone’s uncle) goes off to work leaving Carol to deal with the spooky shenanigans of the house. Paper slides under tablemats so she can’t take a note, garden shears slide out of eye-line after sliding into eye-line, a candelabra lazily moves across a table, water spills from a fallen teapot… the horrors persist. After a knife falls into her hand and blood spills shoddily, Carol gets worried… kind of. Jonathan (who resembles a well-fed Polonia cousin) just thinks it’s nothing to worry about. Phantom screams in the dead of night do little to light any fire under the collective asses of our heroes. An elderly housekeeper named Rose Novak (hey, the movie thought it was important) is attacked in the cellar by the phantom bride with an echoing voice in an awkwardly staged bit of paranormal stupidity. It’s so shocking she slits her own throat with a straight razor. Burglars who look like budget sex thugs show up too and come to a messy end. Why? Because it’s Staten Island viewed through the trash aesthetic goggles of Andy Milligan and even if you don’t mind wasting time on conversations that hold little interest or story progression, people still have to die messily. After a long stretch of nothing posing as horror combined with humanity at its most agitated and romance that hits with all the eroticism of finding a used condom in your grilled cheese, a house warming party happens and bad things follow. There’s still like thirty minutes left that could be three hundred for all I can tell. There’s still time for a decapitation, city hall research, a priest, cancer, floating furniture and a meat cleaver to the noggin. It’s a diseased dumpster spin on The Amityville Horror with a budget consisting of favors and convenience by people who only read about Amityville during the boring parts of whatever basement pornography they were watching. I love it but there’s no way in hell I’d ever recommend it. Yep. It’s a Milligan!

Blood Sorcery (1986) (Hong Kong)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stolen jade and a broken heart are the catalysts for two different men to be hit with the same curse by a powerful Burmese wizard. Sau Au Yeung is a young doctor in Hong Kong whose caring nature has him taking care of a battlefield reporter suffering from a painful and worm-filled bleeding wound on his leg. He comes to find that his father is cursed with the same affliction and tries getting to the bottom of it before his dad and his patient are claimed by said curse. Luckily, a Taoist priest and friend of the family may be able to help but failure could lead to a painful death. It’s a bit jumbled and not as much fun as many of the other HK horrors of the time but it’s still pretty damn rich in entertainment. There’s stock footage, bloody worms, eaten creepy crawlies, and a pretty damn cool magic attack. Odd and goofy enough to be worth your time.

Game Camera (2013) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Disturbing chatter on lab-created biological agents opens up things and then a news report about a flying object crashing in Mount Spokane leads to unsettling footage caught by some dude filming his lady in the woods. The army claims they’re running some training exercises in the area and close it off to the public. The spot reopens and some local discovers a destroyed camera in the trees… this is the footage on said camera. A man heads out into the area with his buddy to record him deer hunting with his friends. So we get to watch as these real middle-aged dopes run into some unbelievable trouble in the middle of nowhere. Natural leader Brad brings along an AR-15 and the dudes have some fun blowing it off in the woods. As they march on through the forest, they find some odd liquid that Brad writes off as moldy pond water. There’s sad dad drinking, sad dad smoking, sad dad humor, sad dad machismo, sad dad reminiscing and sad dad political views filling up most of the runtime. It definitely fits the characters so it’s all works but if you’ve never been around sad dads, you may find it unbearable. The next day they freak out when they stumble across a camp which looks like it was home to one hell of a struggle. There may be no blood, but everything’s torn to shit and the hunters left their guns… not something a hunter would do. They also discover a game camera nearby and Brad decides they should look at what it caught. The photos show some mutated dude attacking a buck and then coming in for a close-up. Ron thinks it’s bullshit, Steve wants to leave, Tom is spooked and Brad thinks it’s their duty to find out what the hell is going on. Brad’s a blowhard so he acts like an asshole about it. Despite his tough guy bullshit, the group decides to head out the next day. They get ready to leave but Brad makes the decision that the trip ain’t over and journeys out into the woods with the truck keys and his AR-15. The group begrudgingly follow. Folks get sick, feelings get hurt and older white men die… so a standard hunting trip with the boys. It’s like Blair Witch Project but everyone is unlikable and having a midlife crisis and instead of a spooky threat you can’t see, it’s a space virus that mutates organisms into cheap-ass zombies you’ll wish you couldn’t see.

Bloodstalkers (1976) (USA)

aka The Night Daniel Died 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Florida-shot obscurity is a must for fans of regional horror flicks. Mike, a Vietnam veteran, heads into the Florida Everglades to stay at his recently inherited parents’ old cabin. He’s dragged along his wife, his best friend and his best friend’s ex-stripper girlfriend. Cautioned away by a less than helpful gas station attendant, Mike ignores the warning that the family cabin is in the territory of Bigfoot-like “blood stalkers”. Soon after the vacationing group arrives, they begin to perceive just how much trouble they are actually in. There’s unaccommodating townsfolk, homicidal backwoods poachers, a complaining wife, horrible humor, dopey dramatics, and indiscernible nighttime filming. There’s also some unexpected strong acting (to go along with your usual homespun awfulness) and an amazingly composed climax set to a choir singing Somewhere to Lay My Head. It may feel like a boring slog to some but I’ve always found Bloodstalkers to be a mesmerizing ninety minutes.

As Darkness Sets In (1984) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Backyard slasher from Iowa runs under twenty minutes and was probably brought to life as a bit of a test run. There’s no dialogue, so it adds more to the vibe that you’re watching some family home movies you were never meant to see. A group of young people do things and title cards let us know who we’re looking at and where they are. Repetitive rock music, the Phantasm score and the essential Halloween theme play out over the scenes where audio was lucky enough to make it in. Film degradation and an empty production budget either bleach the scenes bathed in light or drown everything in shadows… mostly presenting both of those visual issues at the same time. After some smooching and talking, a killer in a tinfoil mask definitely inspired by Quiet Riot begins murdering the cast and crossing out their faces with red marker on various photographs. There’s a decapitation brought to life by damaging the film itself and it’s pretty lovely… at least for something that’s more than a bit indecipherable and done for less than a value meal at Taco Bell. It’s a curiosity piece for sure but nothing you should lose sleep over never seeing.

Dead Men Walk (1943) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

At the funeral for Elwyn Clayton, a woman busts into the church accusing the dead man of being pure evil. She’s hushed and escorted out by the reverend who apologizes to the dead man’s twin brother, Dr. Lloyd Clayton. We later learn that their relationship may have been rocky since youth but everything grew worse once Elwyn returned from India. The man became obsessed with demonology and ancient sorcery. Now, all the kind doctor can hope for is that his brother’s troubled soul is finally at peace. It’s George Zucco in dual roles so I’m highly doubtful of a peaceful and quiet afterlife. Lloyd heads to his brother’s home where he burns his books and is promptly attacked by Elwyn’s hunchbacked servant Zolarr (come on now, like you didn’t know it was Dwight Frye) who accuses the doctor of murdering his own brother. He refutes the claim and insists it was self defense. Yeesh. This is some soap opera bullshit. Anyways, Zolarr runs off, but not before letting Lloyd know that awful things are in his immediate future. That night Zolarr digs up his old boss and Elwyn quickly rises from his coffin to get up to no good. Vampiric deaths greet the small village and Dr. Clayton is reluctant to admit that his brother ranks among the living dead and is feeding on the townsfolk. He assumes a confrontation with his brother may be a hallucination thanks to his tired brain but I’m also thinking he doesn’t want to admit that the Satanic leanings of the dearly departed have allowed him some sort of supernatural power to put a stopper in death. Once his beloved niece is targeted by his dead brother (Gayle grows ill after a visit from the creepy uncle as he attempts to make her his servant), he begins to work with the niece’s beau to put the not-so-dead man to rest for good. Sadly, the man believes the good doctor may be the one who is up to nefarious things and goes to the police for help. Pretty fun vampire flick allows Zucco to play villain and hero and I’m so here for that I basically moved in and started paying rent. Predictable and maybe a tad lazy, it still hits the sweet spot I have for these dusty old horrors.

Reaptown (2020) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

On a work-release program as a night shift security guard for a rail yard in Nevada’s Reaptown, Carrie spends her free time looking for her missing sister. The opening shows a woman arrive for her first day of training and navigating the creepy-ass building while following the sound of a baby wailing. Making it to the source, a specter jumps her and that’s that. There’s a reporter looking into a troubling amount of missing women who all have the work-release program in Reaptown as their final proof of life. So yeah, shit ain’t right in Reaptown. Cassie starts her shift in the same program her sister disappeared partaking in and gets to her rounds on the spooky property. It’s dark and somewhat otherworldly as she walks around, carrying a single flashlight with no other human in sight. Strange shadows pop up on her first night and the whole situation seems a bit off but she makes it through in one piece. She gets a troubling phone call the next day from a stranger who saw her putting up “Missing” posters and is warned she is in danger and that she’s better off just breaking her parole. Even with the unease growing, Cassie stays because finding her sister is of the utmost importance. Of course, as we all know here, digging too deep leads to nothing but trouble. There’s evil on-site and said evil is feeding on those poor young women that usually have nobody to miss them. The cold, dead setting works to the film’s advantage and establishes a pleasantly uneasy vibe but the troubled childhood flashbacks and pointless jump-cuts don’t work at all and take the viewer out of things whenever they pop up. Luckily, it ain’t that often and the rest of the film may be slow-going but I was intrigued and maybe even a little shook. The boogeyman is a simple design and kept in the dark so it works pretty damn well and the lead is more than adequate which is important because it’s mostly a one-woman show. The ending sucks a little but I’m a bit more forgiving of that shit when the majority of everything that preceded worked so well. Another winner from Dutch Marich who unleashed one of my surprise favorites of 2021 with Horror in the High Desert.

Alien Swamp Beast (2018) (USA)

1/2

It’s an alien because it came here in a meteor. It’s a swamp beast because that meteor crashed into a swamp and it takes over the corpse of a dead derp, transforming him into a very distant cousin of From Hell it Came’s Tabanga. Now that all the confusion is sorted, we can get to the film proper and I can ask myself why with only so much time on this earth in a slowly deteriorating vessel I spent an hour with this thing. A dimwitted young man is excited to get out and find that space rock, the old people he lives with tell him to finish his chores before looking for it. A man wakes up and we spend an ass-numbing amount of time watching him amble about his home. Dramatic music plays as he makes coffee, chooses a mug and drinks coffee. He also feeds his dog and pours himself a glass of booze. After that excruciating bit of needlessness we join the meteor-hunting dimwit as he awkwardly talks to a girl waiting for a bus and somehow convinces her to join him in hunting for the space rock. Back to the middle-aged drinking man doing a whole bunch of nothing. He gets called and is forced to cut his sad vacation short because of reasons. His dog watches the TV and a news report comes on about a bank robbery… well get more breaking news updates because why show when you can tell? The glowing green meteor is found, the bank robbers have to leave their car because it runs out of gas and are forced to cut through the swamp, the sad guy is an FBI agent and he’s after the bank robbers (of course it’s personal), he and the female agent running the case do not get along, various locals annoy with their bullshit and that titular monster (who is some cheapjack loveliness) takes fucking forever to show up. Audio issues persist throughout and can’t all be blamed on the wind, lines are flubbed, reshoots are ignored and the visual aspect looks like it was filmed by a camera made from the shattered hopes of dead orphans. It’s an ugly, ugly time. The fun monster and pink-haired bank robber with an eyepatch (What?! I have a type) save it from the oblivion of a zero rating. It’s supposed to be funny, I didn’t laugh once so I guess the joke’s on me.

Whisper (2022) (UK)

⭐️⭐️

A young nurse has a regretful night of drunken fun and is begged by her coworker to pick up a job for their agency instead of nursing her hangover and regretting her actions. Sam is offered triple time to take the supposedly easy job somewhere out in the English countryside… or maybe English suburbs. I don’t know, there was a lot of driving but also it looks like a lot of neighbors. Anyways, that’s not important. Sam’s patient has been comatose for three years so if all goes well there shouldn’t be too many annoyances for the young lady and it seems all she has to worry about are the rules left for her… some of them are a little odd. Like not talking to the guy. She finds a cellphone under a couch and judging by the background screen, it’s the woman we saw attacked by something in the pre-credits. We’ll see more scenes of her and her boyfriend (maybe the guy in a coma?) while Sam hears noises (thumps and someone whispering her name) in the supposedly empty house (except for the coma guy, that is) and discovers some disturbing things. She also finds out that the patient isn’t supposed to have a female carer but her coworker manages to convince her to stay. Night comes around and spookiness comes with it… and fog, a bunch of fog. Sam investigates everything and gets into the attic where she discovers an old cardboard box with plenty of exposition stored within. Thank you very much dusty laptop with three videos on it pointing at an experimental treatment program for possession that went very wrong. And thank you very much coma man’s diary with a bunch of exposition. This is very bad news for Sam… and for the viewers who don’t want to watch footage of coma man not in a coma while diary text runs across the screen. So, bad news all around but for very different reasons. Sam also watches videos on the phone of the girl who was dating coma guy and revealing the creepy shit that was going on with him leading up to his vegetative state. Even with all this conveniently available information, it’s not gonna end well for our hero. Linda Louise Duan sure is easy on the eyes and gives a memorably awkward performance as our young hero which makes her incredibly easy to root for. Well done, Linda. You won me over. Micro-budget spookiness charms as well and I’m in love with effort and pieced together storytelling behind the architecture of the film. The surprisingly decent specter is barely featured for some reason but at least they tried.

The Draft! (2023) (Indonesia)

aka Setan Alas!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

College friends shack up in a secluded old villa belonging to one of the group’s parents for a weekend of fun but that never works out no matter what part of the world you call home. One of their number is spooked and warns that ghosts are attracted to the kind of place they’re in but he’s dismissed by his more modern-thinking friends. A lack of network connection has them extra secluded and a dead generator adds to the horror flick conventions already rattling around the back of everyone’s minds. Add a locked room, an abandoned well and a nearby Dutch cemetery to cement the gloom. Ani begins to see the ghost of her dead sister, Ani’s delightful caretaker uncle creeps around and the group banter back and forth with each other while getting slightly spooked. The next morning the group wakes up to find Ani’s boyfriend murdered and Ani unable to give any explanation as to how. She’s not saying much just that the bedroom window was opened sometime during the night. They soon find Uncle Dadang hanging from the ceiling in his shack. The remaining four decide to leave but can’t flee as fast as they’d like to thanks to someone slicing the car’s tires. Their slow getaway is halted completely when they discover a cliff where no cliff was before completely cutting them off from any form of escape. They go back to the villa, unsettlingly closer than it should be, waiting outside and trying to come up with an answer as to what the hell is happening. Well, we get the answer pretty quick and it’s pretty damn fun. An atmospheric setting that feels well lived in adds to the novel idea running through the bones of the film. It’s been done before but not often enough to be expected and even necessitates familiarity when it comes to the horrific threats coming after the heroes and giving an excuse for the inevitable silliness. Drama is purposefully fumbled, humor actually works and low-rent gore is in the cards. Admittedly, the whole thing could definitely use a shot of adrenaline which has it coming off as awkwardly paced which is a shame but it’s still worth a watch.

Evidence of the Boogeyman (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The legend behind the haunting of a farmhouse and the surrounding area draws the attention of a small film crew looking to make a paranormal documentary. Lighthearted vibes turn to terror when it seems evidence the team catches points to the entity being more than a ghost story. What we’re watching is recovered footage pieced together from damaged hard drives, discarded tapes and police evidence. So, obviously whatever malicious attention the small group of filmmakers caught ended up being fatal. It’s been edited together by the only member of the crew that didn’t make the trip to the location. This means we get an excuse for editing and mockumentary true crime aesthetics… which I will always appreciate. The boogeyman has supposedly claimed the area as its stomping grounds but the key focus is on a small house where it seemingly festers. The abandoned house holds a past involving vanished children and full-body apparitions. Sounds like a good spot to catch some spooky evidence to allow you to actually sell your micro-budget production. Surprise bewbs (plenty of nudity, unexpectedly), a host that ain’t all that good at talking (she’s still incredibly likable), a director out of his depth (he’s also kind of a sleaze), background hauntings, a cool and simple entity that likes showing up on camera (no Blair Witch leave it to the imagination here), a local weirdo (he’s seen Bigfoot!), every found footage haunting shenanigan you can think of and a short dive into casting couch stupidity that feels out of left field and completely needless… even if it pays off in a jumpscare and the striking visual of a nude woman out in the wild all caught in night vision green. It may lack atmosphere as the haunted house isn’t all that notable and we’ve seen everything it offers up a couple dozen times but the cast is solid (annoying qualities exist but are not in the forefront like a lot of these ghost hunting dopes) and the threat ain’t camera shy which makes it just fun enough to have me nodding in approval.

The Bloodstained Lawn (1973) (Italy)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Lunacy and wealth are an already dangerous mix but if you add deviance to the equation, you’re just asking for trouble. A group of well-off weirdos pick up the kind of folks who won’t be missed and bring them back to their fenced-off villa. Initially the random-ass houseguests (a prostitute, a gypsy, a drunk and two hippie hitchhikers) are treated well by the odd brother and sister duo and the sister’s somehow weirder husband who is mighty keen on sporting ridiculous neckerchiefs made to look like ridiculous bow ties. Along with his interesting fashion choices, the husband is an inventor/scientist who specializes in robots and something that has to do with bloodwork. He’s all too happy to collect a sample from the young hippie girl when she pricks herself on something in the guest room couch. He lets her know that he has researched the evolution of plant and animal and has concluded that nature is flawed and it’s on the human race to modify and repair themselves. Of course, the only way to do this is to bring together man and machine. I’d be concerned if I was spending the night in this man’s home. On the first night after the hippies light some incense, smoke their Devil’s lettuce and start getting frisky, the drunk interrupts and takes the hippie dude on a little tour. It ends with him showing the stoned man the gypsy girl, tied up with a rope, buck naked in her room. The creepy brother tells them she’s family and she has epilepsy so it’s for her own safety. The drunk protests but is dismissed for being… well, a drunk. I think if the homeowners got rid of the viewing windows they have on the room doors, this could be avoided but then I guess the creepy sister couldn’t spy on them. A narcotics agent is on the trail as an unsettling amount of missing people have been reported. After discovering wine bottles being shipped out filled with blood, he knows there’s some sinister shit afoot. Let’s just hope he can follow the trail and make it on time to at least rescue one of the slowly vanishing houseguests. An outdoor oven contains a skull, attractive people get naked, a “perfect man” is created, there’s a champagne infused naked dance party in a room of mirrors, sexual hang ups, a whole lotta wine, bickering spouses, a hilarious janky-ass blood drinking robot (fuckin’ thing has a cape) that’s about as threatening as something a bored child would piece together in their stepdad’s garage, a basement secret that we’ve all seen coming from about ten minutes in and a last act reveal that’s somehow disturbing and hilarious in unison. It is one strange flick that despite its giallo title is nowhere near that particular area of film. Stretches of boredom hit more than once but the main thrust of the story is so unexpected and off-kilter that it’s worth waiting around for.

Paranormal Surveillance Camera (2012) (Japan)

aka Caught on Camera! Death on Security Cameras

⭐️

A team of paranormal investigators scour over hours of security camera footage, analyzing for proof of the supernatural. This is the footage which offers up the best proof. A somber man narrates the footage and an opening warning lets us know that they are not responsible for any awfulness that follows viewing this disturbing shit. If that blanket statement doesn’t cover boredom, I just may sue their asses. The first bit is a camera overlooking an intersection which captures a voice reading the sutras and showing a mysterious woman who appears and disappears followed by camera glitches. If that doesn’t sound interesting to you but you figure it could thrill maybe a small child or an idiot, I apologize for not stressing enough how uninteresting it is. A taxi driver shares a story about stopping to pick up a woman in white who ended up not being there. He tells the story in full and then we get to watch the dashcam footage of the incident… more than once. They show another angle of the camera pointing towards the driver’s back seat and we watch the door open by some phantom hand. My eyes are getting heavy. It just goes on like this, supernatural occurrences boring enough that you could believe someone is pushing for this to be taken seriously but obviously not because, ya know, ghosts aren’t real. But hey, they tried so I guess that’s something.

The Parish (2019) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

On the heels of her husband’s tragic death, Liz and her daughter move to a small town looking for a fresh start. The teenage girl has a bit of a justified attitude to go along with the uprooting but the angst turns to terror when some spooky spookiness starts spooking. Mom is already plagued with nightmares about her dead spouse and has replaced her faith with a bit of the booze. Shit changes when her husband’s spirit shows up and tells her to “Help them.” after a creepy nun appears on her front lawn being all creepy. Solid leads (most of the time) successfully pull off the grieving mother and daughter portrayal (no easy task) and Bill Oberst Jr is there as the local pastor. A giant janitor stalks around, there’s a secret at the daughter’s new school and ghosts act like ghosts. Perhaps the power of faith can wrap everything up in a neat little package? Most likely. BOJ tells a great ghost story (dude has always been a scene stealer) and Angela DiMarco is really good as the mother with a plate full of shit on her table. Sadly, the movie kind of lets her down. It’s not as creepy as it should have been but Angela DiMarco and BOJ make it worth a cursory glance.

Arpie (1987) (Italy)

aka The Harpies

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Another Super 8 slice of heaven from Fabio Salerno focuses on a young woman named Veronica who has a monstrous secret. She’s some sort of harpy-demon-thing who spends her free time murdering men who come into her home. The disappearance of a store clerk brings two detectives to her door but they dismiss her as a suspect almost immediately. One of the cops drops his keys and when he goes back inside he discovers a basement full of bodies. Veronica takes him out with an electric knife but his partner manages to gun her down. He believes the nightmare to be over but when he sees her on the street a few days later he realizes the shit storm has just begun. Fabio Salerno scores another winner with this weirdo monster flick that manages to be more charming than terrifying. Cheap but awesome special effects are sprinkled throughout the runtime as Veronica does mortal damage to various folks she meets. A severed head pops up in a woman’s bed, looking like a badly burnt potato with glowing eyes, the same woman gets a knife to the noggin for her troubles. It all climaxes with a Demons-inspired body breakout by the titular creature. Backyard fun of the highest (well, lowest) quality.

The Screaming (2000) (USA)

aka Scream Again

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Strapped for cash, anthropologist student Bob Martin rents a room from sultry Crystal Traum with the promise of a large grant the university is sending his way. Bob plans on studying in the general quiet of his new digs. His new landlord lives next door and is into healthy living and immediately works on getting him into her odd new-age-religion/self-help-group named Crystalnetics. The opening murder of a young girl by some stab-happy black-robed goons clues us in that the Crystalnetics cult is up to no good. The girl nearly escapes but just as she’s about to taste sweet freedom some awesome-looking monster snatches her with a gore-soaked tentacle… nice. Bob watches the… uhm… well-built landlord stretch before a jog and falls under her spell. Bob chain smokes, fantasizes about Crystal and acts like an ass on the path to his masters. His professor isn’t happy with his work and his grant money is withheld until he starts showing some promise. While this is going on, we see the cult get up to blood drinking and sacrificing to their goofy monster overlord. They also have some sinister plans for Bob in the works, they just got to get him cleared of all his nasty habits before the next lunar cycle or some shit. The more than 2,000-year-old Crystal begins working her magic and Bob begins living a better life. He begins focusing on Crystaltology and his professor warns him of the dangers of the offshoot religion. The professor advises him to stay away from the temple and Bob takes his warning to heart. A German detective shows up (the Crystaltologists were kicked out of Germany after a bunch of bodies drained of blood turned up) and he’s digging into Crystalnetics and the trail of corpses they seem to be leaving in their wake. A chance encounter with the snooping sleuth further wisens Bob up to the evil machinations afoot. The clock runs down and Bob has to figure out how to defeat the centuries-old malevolence looking to fuck things up. More low-budget goofiness from the hit or miss Sterling Entertainment (the Things anthology series and the persistent Camp Blood “franchise” among what feels like thousands of others) features a likably unlikable (does that make sense?) hero that looks like some unholy grunge version of Geddy Lee, a sometimes-claymation-sometimes-puppet monster, obvious years between filming, bewbs, cheap gore, footage I’m pretty sure I’ve seen elsewhere and ancient aliens. Jeff Leroy (Werewolf in a Womens Prison and The Witch’s Sabbath) adds another winner to his cheap thrills resume. It may lack the pure sleaze of those aforementioned bits of fun but it still works thanks to its enthusiastic plot and game cast. This is one David S. Sterling should be proud to have in his catalogue.

Alien Beach Party Massacre (1996) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Aliens steal a weapon called DEATHSPHERE™, which looks like a volleyball, from a malevolent race of warmongering creeps. This becomes important when the fleeing extraterrestrials are shot down by their pig-faced pursuers and their ship crash lands on earth where a group of idiots are having a beach party. The only survivor amongst the crashed benevolent-ish aliens is a clumsy janitor named Nagillig and he’s tasked with finding the volleyball... sorry... DEATHSPHERE™ and keeping it out of the clutches of the evil Odem and his gimp-masked assistant. There’s a ponytailed scientist tracking the alien, a virginal girl and her prickish jock boyfriend (“he’s a pitcher, ya know”), spoiled Tina (it’s her beach party), a couple surfers, a nerdy cutie and some dude in a WASP shirt who constantly has his hair in his face. When a group goes off to smoke pot in an abandoned house, the evil aliens begin picking off the cast. Before that there’s a shit-ton of unfunny hijinks and aliens spying. It does pick up when the low-rent horrific elements kick in but it hits just a little too late to make it must see amateur fun. Californian accents clash with the high pitched gibberish/clucking language of the aliens bringing about an intense longing for deafness. There’s a hilarious death by immolation that I’m still laughing about, shitty digital effects randomly rear their wonderful head and the surf-rock vibes are provided by the hip sounds of Insect Surfers.

Rigor Mortis (2013) (Hong Kong)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A supernatural shit-storm is unleashed upon a public housing tenement in Hong Kong shortly after a burnt out actor moves in and attempts suicide. Before death can claim him (and some nefarious entity that has been waiting for a prone vessel) a vampire hunter past him prime in boxers and a robe smashes his door down and slices the noose. Yau successfully saves the life of Chin Siu-Ho and exorcises the entity. Now that Chin Siu-Ho has come close to whatever Hell awaits and pierced the veil but lived, he is now privy to the spooky shit residing in the massive apartment complex. And holy fuck is there a bunch of malicious insanity going down. Spectral tenants, hungry vampires and unrestful dead all call the place home and many of them are not content with sticking to the shadows. The death of an elderly man leads to his desperate wife asking for paranormal help from a magic man who lives in the building, a resurrection ritual is performed but rules are not followed thanks to impatience and a whole big can of worms is opened. Yau takes Chin under his wing to help fight the situation spiraling out of control. Unexpected death, expected death, impressive action sequences, fantastic set pieces (those damn twins) and a whole batch of awesome nightmares make the extended runtime fly on by. Cop out ending aside, it’s a wonderful show of love for the classic hopping vampire cinema that turned many a people into fans of HK horror and starring more than a couple folks from the essential Mr. Vampire series, there’s just a whole lot to love when it comes to this bad boy.

Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Dolly Broadbent (Laurie Felix Bass, who is a damn treat), who we were introduced to two films back, grew up on Majesty Ranch (now the owner) where she and her family were plagued by some horrific entities that may have been close but were not quite human. She’s talked about all this awfulness before and in Fire Watch she mentioned that her father documented a lot of it but the box where he kept all of it disappeared a long while back. After a fire destroyed her home, Dolly managed to find her father’s missing box buried in their root cellar. This is enticing to the familiar faces we’ve come to know from the series and it points, not only to Dolly’s father’s mental decline, but the fact that the investigation of the fatal strangeness cursing the area had been looked into decades before the filmmakers of the series had any clue that some sinister shit was going down. A printed timeline, a mysterious contact, old photographs, film and video fill out the pieces as the usual talking heads add some spice to the intrigue. Butchered animals and spooky visitors prove that just because they call it paranoia doesn’t mean nobody is out to get you. Things get tied together, further questions are raised, more high strangeness gets introduced and I’m beginning to think there may not be an endgame for this series. There’s enough spookiness and interesting ideas on display to keep me invested but them returns are diminishing and my patience is going with em. They set up the next entry, so let’s hope it comes to a close because the water treading should not go on forever.

Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch (2024) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscar Mendoza looks into the disappearance of Gary Hinge (the first film) as a wildfire rages on the opposite side of the state. He’s also on a journey of personal discovery as a tough history had lead him down a rough path which he has seemingly managed to find his way out of. As law enforcement focuses on the fires, he uses this chaotic distraction to search for the mysterious cabin which led to Gary’s unfortunate end. Oscar is working on the theory that Gary had some secrets and thanks to his personal ties with the area, he has a heads up on the actual location where Gary vanished. He ends up in the area where misfortune befall the women in the second outing and that’s when the high strangeness begins bubbling up to the surface. Undeterred, it all leads to an old mine and a ghost town by the name of Edna. Of course, Oscar goes missing as well, the footage is found and we get another mockumentary set up around said footage… just with a some footage from the prior outings as well and a little twist when it comes to the fate of our protagonist. Not complaining, it’s pieced together professionally… as usual. A county conspiracy, strange encounters, familiar faces, spooky footage… the usual. Some solid lore building helps move things away from the drab opening act and the climactic hand-held horrors are what one would come to expect and enhanced by taking place in a creepy-ass cave and a spooky-ass ghost town. We’ll need answers soon because the journey only works when the destination is worth a damn, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt… for now.

Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva (2023) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Follow up to Marich’s 2021 found footage treat, traces a string of tragedies in Northeastern Nevada that tie into the disappearance of the prior outing’s protagonist. The documentary team behind the original dive into the mysterious murder of a woman in her home and the disappearance of another along the same desolate stretch of Nevada highway. The town of Cypress is the location of the incident and interviews with the EMT on site, a journalist and a few residents paint a picture of the horror that hit. Minerva is a college student partaking in a College geology program in Cypress, working with geologists in an actual mine. When she arrives in the small Nevada town, she finds the dorms full, so the school places her in a single white trailer in the middle of the isolated desert. Minerva’s video diary plumps up the runtime and brings on the chills as talking heads and follow up footage add to the intrigue. There’s more going on than you think, which brings a level of high strangeness into the fold and when Minerva discovers a bag containing an old tape and incredibly bizarre paintings, the solid ground of reality kinda turns into mush. This shit is properly spooky and Dutch Marich is really fucking good at this but unfortunately it also feels a bit undercooked and like it solely exists as a bridge into the next one. There’s too much going on and it doesn’t wrap up anything satisfactory. It’ll probably be a little better off once the inevitable third part drops.

Horror in the High Desert (2021) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In 2017, an experienced outdoors enthusiast named Gary Hinge vanished while on an excursion in Northern Nevada. Three years on, his roommate Simon, his sister Beverly, a journalist who covered his disappearance and a private investigator discuss his fate. Gary kept his location secret, as he was known to do, so they stumbled out of the gate to get their search running. The small town initially treats it as big news but without any updates they eventually lose interest. His truck gets found in a location that really wasn’t a place that Gary would want to explore and the search turns up nothing. Beverly suspects foul play and kind of gets in the way of the investigation, eventually hiring on the private investigator to start digging when it looks like it wasn’t her brother that drove his truck out to the High Desert. Police eventually call off the search but some fans of Gary’s blog think they may know where he is. His final posts point in the direction of something horrifying encountered on his last expedition and responding to pressure from his followers, Gary decides to head back out and prove what he saw. You already know how it goes but it’s a lot worse than you think. Solid fake documentary hits the right notes and succeeds in crafting an unsettling tragedy thanks to fine acting from a minimal cast and the perfect amount of slowly growing unease eventually coming to a crescendo. I’m a sucker for horror-themed mockumentaries, so I may not be the best person to come to for an honest opinion but it freaked my wife out to the point where I had to confess it was just a film, so I guess that’s something.

Werewolf Shadow (1971) (Spain/West Germany)

aka The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman/Shadow of the Werewolf/Walpurgis Night/Blood Moon /Satan vs The Wolf Man 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 

On the grounds of the estate being rented by Waldemar Daninsky (uh oh) the gravesite of the Satan-worshipping vampire/witch Countess Wandesa (uh oh) can be found. Two sexy college girls (oh no) are searching for said final resting place and, thanks to being lost and low on gas, manage to stumble upon Daninsky’s homestead. He invites them to spend the week (after all, the nearest town is twenty miles away and his handyman will be by on Sunday and can take them into town) and the girls accept. Elvira is a bit wary but Genevieve is all about going with the flow. The girls are ecstatic to discover that their thesis subject is in fact buried on the grounds and upon digging up the Countess, Genevieve not only removes the silver cross lodged in the skeletons chest but manages to bleed on the skull (UH OH!) Before you can say “God damnit Genevieve!” Countess Wandesa is back and doing what them vampires do. Unfortunately she’s not the only issue plaguing the Daninsky residence. There’s an old curse which causes poor Waldemar to transform into a werewolf during the full moon. His slightly insane sister has been managing to chain him up during the transformation but thanks to her recent murder at the teeth of the newly vampirized Genevieve, Waldemar is running around doing what them bloodthirsty hairy beasts do. Of course he and Elvira fall hard for each other which is quite convenient considering he can only be killed by the hands of his true love, thus ending his cursed existence. But before he can be put down for good, he’ll have to take care of that pesky vampire woman who wants Elvira as her slave to keep Daninsky in check. Paul Naschy is at his tortured best and there are plenty of boobs and blood to keep ya occupied. There’s an excellent atmosphere and the Barbara Steele-esque Patty Shepard is a wonderful visual presence as the evil Countess. An unnecessary subplot with Elvira’s police detective boyfriend coming to the rescue doesn’t distract that much but feels a bit tacked on. Nonetheless, this one is justifiably revered and a classic of monster cinema.

Blood Song (1982) (USA)

aka Dream Slayer/Premonitions

⭐️⭐️

Frankie Avalon plays psychopathic killer Paul Foley. Paul escapes from the institution housing him and starts dropping bodies on his path across America leading him to an inevitable confrontation with a young girl who received a blood transfusion from him years back. For some reason this has caused a psychic link with the young lady who is now witnessing his crimes in her mind’s eye. Avalon plays a mournful tune on his flute, something he’s been doing since as a kid he witnessed his papa take a gun to his mama, her lover and then himself. Tough break. High schooler Marion not only has these visions fucking with her head and causing the camera to zoom in on her eyes, she also has to deal with her hardass/abusive papa Richard Jaeckel being a real dick and hating on her seaman boyfriend Joey. I’m guessing it’s misplaced rage at himself because his drunk-ass is the reason his little girl has a leg brace and why a blood transfusion was necessary. Sure hope he’s not supposed to be the hero of this. Anyway, Paul rambles on, murdering anyone that dislikes his skills as a flutist. Eventually Marion stumbles across Paul burying a corpse in the woods and now she’s on his radar. Bad news for her friends or at least it would be if the movie had any interest in entertaining its audience. If non-threatening flute music and extreme close-ups of a girl’s eyeball are your thing, well that’s kind of unsettling but you should probably watch this. “Mild” is probably the best word I could use for this one. The lead is cute but none of the victims-to-be (our hero included) are all that memorable. Luca Brasi is there as a ship captain and that was nice to see. There’s also some hatchet violence to keep things a little interesting as it shambles to the close.

As Above, So Below (2014) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A young woman carries on her father’s work searching for the Philosopher’s Stone, slipping into the same obsession that eventually drove him to madness and suicide. After a close call in Iran, she gets some info that could get her further than her father ever managed. This leads her to Paris which eventually leads her and a small group of people into the catacombs deep under the City of Light. Caught on camera thanks to her being the focus of a documentary, we get a POV look at the fate which befalls the poor young folks as their journey takes them into Hell itself. Claustrophobic and creepy, the film smartly does some shooting in the actual catacombs to build the atmosphere. There’s some shocking violence to add a nice jolt to the proceedings and it plays out intriguingly enough to raise it above the usual found footage humdrum.

Reap of Evil (1994) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A one-sided conversation about taxes leads to snakes burrowing in the face… but it’s all a dream! A group of friends play gin rummy and the mortician of the group discusses some particularly nasty cases and then they discuss the nightmares they’ve been having. They sound horrifying but since they’re being explained and not shown by a group of guys who are better-suited to ring you up for your 1 AM beer run, the impact lands somewhere short of effective. Mark (who looks like me if I were your dad in the 80s) has recently lost his wife and the grief is leading to suicidal thoughts. His friends are worried about him… hit those words of reassurance and discussion between significant others. Mortician dude has a wife and child and he’s concerned about Mark. Mark’s sister pays him a visit and mentions a priest that’s been stopping by her work at the hospital (?), possibly an asylum. More low-fi nightmares hit. Footage of ducks in a pond pops on the screen and in the corner an intertitle reads “3rd day”. Thank god they let me know! We rejoin our priest in a meeting with a couple other men of the cloth (one of them in an old man mask) and he’s concerned there’s a coverup going on. Two holy men are dead and one has been institutionalized. The Six Flags priest (MORE ABSTINENCE! MORE FUN!) dismisses him and then cryptically mentions an inevitable horrificness on the horizon. The next scene has a demon rip off a priest’s head. It’s all quick cuts, muddy darkness and indecipherable red lights… it’s pretty awesome. Off to the morgue and a graphic autopsy on a less than convincing body. The woman wakes up while her chest has been opened up… it’s another nightmare! The fourth day hits and a building explodes in New York City. We’re treated to real unedited footage of a disaster. The priest has visions of a demonic face in the middle of an electronics store and almost faints. More talk! Someone’s husband is dead and the mortician guy knows the wife. A coin flip decides who has to call her. The woman goes to the morgue (which more than resembles a kitchen at a fast food joint) to see her husband, mortician dude walks in, tries to talk to her and eats a shovel for his troubles. A blonde pays a visit to the priest and seduces him but he’s able to resist. We’re only a little more than a half-hour into this and things are just getting muddier. There’s another demon attack and (I think) a baby in a trash bag, this is immediately followed by a skeleton coming to life and molesting a sleeping woman. Said woman nonchalantly pushes the corpse off and goes to calm her nerves in the bathroom. While sitting on the toilet, she explodes. I’m exhausted. The world slips into impossible-to-navigate darkness and all hell breaks loose. This means maggots, face-ripping, dismemberment, a whole lot of exposition from a demon reading from cue cards which sort of explains things and a climax which brings to mind a lethargic Olaf Ittenbach set piece. It’s like an analog stream of consciousness acid trip that’s edging out your heroin overdose and populated with people you lost contact with after high school. Stop-motion monsters, nasty basement violence, and audio recorded in a paint can left in the depths of Hell are all wrapped up in a needlessly complicated but charmingly enthusiastic package. I loved it but I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch it again.

Flight to Hell (2003) (Italy)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t want to believe that this was a labor of love from Alvaro Passeri but I’m at a loss to see where he thought there was any profit to be made in this film. It was three years before Snakes on a Plane would be a surprise box office hit and outside of the obvious Alien franchise love, some nods to The Thing and creatures that come off as a somehow less believable version of those flesh-eating “turd-ants” from the Canadian zero-budget masterpiece Things, I’m just scratching my head at how this was anything but a project born of love. But this is not love as we know it. This is a love corrupted to the point of rot. This kind of love does not inspire poetry or song, it inspires a trip to the clinic to get some bloodwork done. Captain Don wakes from a horrible nightmare and realizes he is running late for his flight. He rushes through his routine and heads to work. He captains the Roulette One. It’s a private flying casino owned by a dude named Mike who has everything rigged to swindle rich high stakes gamblers who prefer to lose their cash in the sky unlike all us other poor schmucks who go broke on solid ground. The rest of the crew consists of two technicians (who work as game riggers/handymen), an irresponsible co-pilot, and two stewardesses and all of them are in on Mike’s scheme. The clientele for this trip is two rich dudes and their trophy girls. Every one of them is going to come to regret getting on this flight. While the usual hijinks of the horny crew play out, something odd is happening in outer space. There’s been some kind of hatching and the plane is on course to fly through a strange neon green fog filled with spores. The spores make their way into the plane and in almost no time there is a green goo over all the important things that keep the Roulette One operational. Mechanical malfunctions begin to cause problems but the worst has yet to show its ugly face. Seems the green slime is full of eggs and these eggs are ready to hatch. The shit really hits the fan when the plane becomes infested with computer generated little lizard-bug things that can morph through solid objects, turn invisible and infect humans. One technician is unfortunate enough to get one up his nose and eventually bursting out of his eye! The leaping little bastards aren’t the only threat either, there’s also a big puppet thing residing in the cargo bay and munching on anyone unfortunate enough to cross its path. Yeah, there’s quite a bit going down in this stinky piece of Italian cheese but if you have no sense of humor ya best just look away. I’d say almost eighty percent of the set is green screen and it never comes close to looking believable. We get “lucky” with some digitally rendered special effects but most of the stuff is brought to life with piss-poor cgi. The acting is awful all across the board (it was performed in English [maybe with some hope of international sales] so all the dialogue sounds a bit off) and none of the gore really hits thanks to crappy SFX. If you’re in the right state of mind you may just have a blast with it but there’s very little to recommend if you’re hunting down some serious horror shenanigans. It’s complete crap but the disturbing idea that it was a passion project makes it easier to swallow.

Party Night (2017) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Three couples ditch the official after-prom party and have their own celebration at the secluded lake house of one of their uncles. In between all the angsty teen dramatics, a large bohunk in a blank mask with a big-ass machete starts picking ‘em off. It’s your standard stalk and slash with the added bonus of completely unlikable protagonists. The kids stick around waiting for their friends to turn up, plenty of red stuff spills and the mystery behind a string a disappearances in the area is solved. A dull 70 minutes.

fuji_jukai.mov (2016) (Japan)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A team doing a report on the disturbing amount of suicides that take place within a beautiful forest under the shadow of Mt. Fuji come across a discarded cellphone. The footage from said phone is edited together with eyewitness accounts to present a full length feature. Teenage Ami journeys out to the Aokigahara Forest, planning to take her own life. A truly gorgeous location to put an end to the unfathomable sadness that some people cannot escape from. Two other teenage girls, Mi-tan and Hinata, join her after she invites anyone who is curious to come and see her take her own life. The whole plan being for them to upload her final footage for her. Mi-tan seems a bit excited (and slightly insane) and Hinata has a real quiet sociopath vibe to her but I think Ami is just content she won’t be alone in her final moments. The three girls trek through the woods, getting to know each other and building a dynamic that just feels off. Well, obviously because all of them are there for pretty awful reasons on the awful reasons spectrum. The deeper they travel into the vast ocean of trees, the more things begin to feel off, besides the natural offness you would expect to find in a place so beautiful yet soaked in that much sadness. Eventually, the inevitability sinks in and something it begins to feel like there’s a purposefully obscure layer running just out of grip behind this trek in the woods. The discovery of a corpse destroys some confidence and curiosity takes a backseat to fear. It also causes the girls to flee from their path, which sucks when there’s so much woods to get lost in. Night falls, a village deep in the forest is stumbled across and the truth comes out. The main crux of the footage is shot on iPhone and it works pretty well, interviews with locals and people familiar with the location add a nice bit of backstory to things that our main characters couldn’t have offered up without feeling completely out of place. It builds a solid atmosphere to the slow-burning dread and hits a few disturbing notes… that livestream moment is a fucking cringe-inducing heart punch. The film offers up a lot more than expected at 84 minutes but it also drags as it lulls in some spots. Thankfully the setting is a major advantage and makes it a bit easier to look past a plot that can’t really fill the runtime and is plenty familiar. It also doesn’t fumble the ending which is a worry that comes along with all found footage and mockumentaries.

The Ascent (2019) (UK)

aka Black Ops/Stairs

⭐️⭐️

A special ops squad, going by the name of Hell’s Bastards, are sent into a war torn stretch of the world to retrieve some intel. Upon wiping out a camp of soldiers, the team discover a blonde woman chained up in one of their tents. She bites the finger off of one of the soldiers and then warns the team to “not go down.” The prisoner may be a civilian but the hardass team leader demands the termination of the woman. One of the soldiers begrudgingly follows the order. Enemy fire pins them down soon after, but after some killing and ignoring of war crimes, the team manage to make it to the extraction point and flee. Surviving the dangers of infiltrating a violent civil war, the unit is thrust into something worse when the group of soldiers return back to home base. A busted elevator forces them to take the stairs and they find themselves trapped on an endless stairwell where their past sins come to collect and a failure to move upward leads to death. Time stops working, reality crumbles and the soldiers start dropping as they march on to their final judgement under the realization that nothing makes any fucking sense anymore. That spooky prisoner they shot in the head seems to be the one haunting their elite asses and the connection is made pretty quickly to how they got placed in this awful situation… something their dickhead leader does not want to admit. With doorways leading back to their strike on the camp, they get it in their heads that if things play out differently, they may be able to escape their current predicament. Dwindling numbers in their ranks make it difficult but it sure beats wandering up a staircase forever. The cast is more than capable and the little-seen spirit design is fine if not a bit familiar but it runs way longer than it needs to and loses steam with way too much time left.

Zombies: The Beginning (2007) (Italy)

aka Zombie 2009/Island of the Living Dead 2 

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

In May of 2007 the trash horror community lost a legend. Not as popular as Argento or as talented as Fulci, Bruno Mattei shuffled off this mortal coil without much fanfare. It's understandable, the man was lacking in many of the qualities respected filmmakers exhibit. He excelled at rush jobs and ripoffs. The majority of his career is filled with forehead-slapping failures and the kind of wonderful crap most low-budget movie makers wish they could harness. But Mattei kept at it and the trash gods blessed him with a gift. As a lover of garbage cinema, I can't say that I enjoy any purveyor of crap more than Bruno Mattei (or any Italian filmmaker). Mattei passed away nearly half way through the year of 2007 but he had one last gift to share and it's only fitting that his final film would be a cheap-ass ripoff of the Hollywood blockbuster Aliens. Picking up where 2006's Island of the Living Dead left off, lone survivor Sharon (Yvette Yzon and just forget about her being a red-eyed vampire and treasure hunter) is found floating on what remains of her blown up salvage ship. After a brief recovery in the hospital, she is forced to answer for the millions of dollars lost in the explosion of the ship and materials aboard by the Tyler INC company. Needless to say, her story about an island of flesh-eating zombies is not being bought by anyone. She gets shit-canned and becomes a monk, hoping she'll find some inner peace and escape from her constant nightmares of her time on that awful island. Well, Tyler INC has other plans. A big-wig from the company tracks her down, looking for her assistance. Apparently they checked up on her story, found it to be true and transported some of the living dead to a research facility on a different island. Now, they've lost contact with their team and could use the help of someone who has dealt with the undead before just in case shit has hit the fan. Hesitant at first, Sharon decides to confront her fears and join the rescue mission. Faster than you can say "copyright infringement" her, the Tyler INC company man and a team of soldiers are off to the island. If you've seen Aliens, you know where this is going. Just replace xenomorphs with some shoddy and lumpy zombies and you've hit the nail on the head. But you must remember, this is a Bruno Mattei film so you're not just getting a by-the-numbers rip off. Instead you get mutant children, chest-bursting babies, a giant mutant baby with an eyeball on its head, a possible Sasquatch cameo and (in the pièce de résistance) instead of an alien queen we get an English speaking papier-mâché giant brain. It almost seems purposeful just how bad the film is but if that were so, I'd enjoy it a hell of a lot less. It's the reason I've never really enjoyed Troma films. It's different when the creators actually set out to fail. Charmless actors, low-budget SFX, the shocking use of the Game of Thrones theme and dialogue written by a brain damaged monkey (when its not being outright stolen) all litter the run time. There is nothing wrong with loving the masters of their craft and Italy had a shit-ton of experts. On the fringes of Italian cinema that rascal Mattei built himself a little home made of garbage and I'd much rather spend time there than anywhere else. Ciao Bruno.