⭐️⭐️1/2
A terrifying forest spirit wreaks havoc on a hospital, ending in a bloody slaughter. The entity is trapped in a pavilion following a witchcraft ritual. Decades later, a construction crew is begrudgingly forced to demolish a wall they know they should not be touching. They open up a hole and then flee after the dude operating the sledgehammer gets grabbed by something. An older nurse knows they should be nowhere near the “red pavilion” but the head doctor demands that the remodel go through. It’s too late for any dispute anyways. That hole has unleashed a whole bunch of evil into the hospital. A kind-hearted doctor (Sofiá Rocha) is familiar with the legend surrounding the place and doesn’t outright dismiss the supernatural, which makes her a lot more sympathetic than her tired and annoyed boss. Dr. Balbuena is asked to stay on an overnight shift due to a dwindling staff and hears something odd. A strange whistling (like the creepy-ass note featured in the backwoods classic Just Before Dawn) is emanating from the hole and the old nurse is convinced that the entity trapped thirty years back has returned and is looking to regain its former power. But as much as she pleads with Dr. Castro, he just sees her as causing unnecessary panic in his hospital. He suspends her and she leaves him with only one warning; if he hears the whistle and confronts what’s making it, do not look whatever it is in the eyes. Following an assault on her boyfriend, Dr. Balbuena’s daughter shows up at the facility and tracks the eerie whistle to its source. Guess what gets ahold of her. Her mother logically assumes the moody teen has just gone home after being expected to wait while her mama looks in on her boyfriend but the possessed girl is now creeping around the hospital and patients are dying. Knowing there’s no way in hell she can abandon her daughter, the doctor asks the nurse back to assist with trapping the spirit again. A goth teenager dressed like a prostitute crawling around and sucking out souls ain’t exactly my idea of scary but eventually a sort-of exorcism requires this films take on a trek through The Further and we… still don’t really get to see the jungle-born nightmare creature trapped behind the wall. Bummer. There’s a kid in a wheelchair to root for (don’t grow too attached) and some quality sound design to cause a few goosebumps. It’s all perfectly adequate, it’s just a little too familiar for its own good.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Endlessly depressing post-apocalyptic rumination from the usually happy-go-lucky Soviets. After the nuclear missiles have fallen, a small group of miserable survivors have sheltered in the basement of a museum. A Noble Prize winning doctor writes notes to his missing (most likely dead) son as his wife deteriorates and the shit world around him turns shittier. Yet, he holds onto hope... and is constantly kicked in the metaphorical groin because of it. Featuring a small group of orphans who survived the destruction of their orphanage (re-orphaned?), burnt out orange and cold blue film tint, martial law, gas masks, a nightmarish march through a children’s ward and the haunting yet brief moment the end comes. If you’re familiar with the arthouse depression the end of the world brings, you know what you’re getting into. Bleak moments livened up by some morbid beauty. “Dear Eric, Some say that children live by the joy of learning the world. However, I am convinced that even in their happiest moments children live by fear. When I was a child I lived by the fear of locomotives. People said that when I was a baby, I saw how a locomotive had run over a cow. I don’t remember that. But in my darkest nightmares a huge black locomotive kept pursuing me. My feet felt rooted to the ground. I woke up screaming” We get it... everything is awful.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A supposedly haunted church in Texas is investigated by a film crew on the condition that they leave the premises by nightfall. Fort Worth locals are hesitant to speak about the place because the legends concerning the South Side Church (formerly Rose Chapel) have spooked area folks for a long time, especially when it comes to a dressmaker named Isabelle Rose and a fire that claimed her life. You better believe this gets their investigative senses tingling, enough to ignore any supposed curse. After an interview with a bar owner is plagued by some strange electrical problems, we cut to an elderly police officer going over the footage the trio of filmmakers left behind. So, something goes wrong. They meet up with a semi-scuzzy caretaker wiling to let them tour the large property for some cash and with the promise that they leave when he leaves. The derelict place looks like it should be haunted by more than the spiders I am sure are probably creeping around every dark corner. The dressmaker’s spirit is glimpsed pretty early on, creeping in the background of the spooky-ass second floor and the caretaker warns them that the generator is about to go out so they need to vamoose right-quick. Rules are broken, people are trapped and lives are lost. A tale as old as time. An effective specter and solid setting goes a long way for any found footage ghost flick, the characters get a little annoying but you’ve seen way worse dopes throwing themselves needlessly in the path of supernatural terror… well, one of them reaches a pretty high level of aggravating. The police bits are regular old cinematic style and also don’t seem all that necessary even with the cops playing into the found footage towards the end. It’s a standard script done with moderate talent that runs a bit too long but with some of the pure found footage ass I’ve partaken in on Tubi, I’m thankful that this team got a good amount right.
aka Tomb of the Mummy
⭐️⭐️
Priya Rai (star of such memorable flicks as Femdom Ass Worship 3 and Squirt Squad) takes the heavy role as the sorceress Isis. She and her lover/husband/brother Osiris rule over ancient Egypt with fairness but Osiris’ jealous brother Set has other plans. Set kills Osiris and takes the throne for himself but Isis ain’t about to stand the fuck down. She’s caught while attempting to resurrect her husband with black magic and Set has Osiris chopped into pieces and buried in different spots as to prevent Isis from ever being able to resurrect his disassembled ass. Isis vows revenge and promises she and her brother/lover will be reunited and lay claim to the world. This brings us to the modern day where a group of six college students are given the assignment to uncover and document their museum’s recent acquisitions. The unlikely archeologists are dim as fuck (Most of them, at least. You can tell who the nerds are because they have glasses and bad hair.) which I’m guessing is why they are joined by their professor and a renowned Egyptologist in their duties for the overnight activities. Well, the vengeful spirit of Isis is awakened because youthful puds wanted to get high off of old-ass drugs and all hell breaks loose as she begins collecting pieces to put her lover back together. She also has a silly digitally altered voice… so that’s great. The annoying dinks start dropping, chesty Isis finally shows up to alleviate the tedium and possess some ladies, PG-13 sexual liaisons go down, dub-step pollutes the soundtrack, charmingly shoddy violence takes out the cast, shaky green screen brings ancient Egypt to ramshackle life as less-than-believable narration explains everything and Priya Rai may be stacked in the chest area but her acting skills are on shaky ground, luckily she’s just as good if not better than most of the other cast… looking at you Set. It’s all pretty dumb and lazy but you’ve seen a whole lot worse and Priya Rai’s cleavage wasn’t there.
aka Outbreak
⭐️⭐️1/2
A meteor crashes through the roof of a national history museum in the small town of Blackwater, Louisiana after the museum curator, Dr Frank Abernathy (Vincent Ventresca), finds a strange tracking beacon in the frozen mammal his museum is famous for. Turns out that it wasn’t a meteor but a spaceship housing a shapeshifting alien. In order to survive earth’s atmosphere, it latches onto the first organism it comes into contact with. If you read the title, you should be able to guess what partially-frozen exhibit it sets up in. The 17-ton alien-possessed zombie Woolly Mammoth stomps around, sucking the life out of folks with its trunk or crushing people under its big-ass feet. Two government agents show up tracking the “meteor” and Dr Abernathy’s daughter (Summer Glau) sneaks out on her 16th birthday to party and get back at her dad for missing her big day. We learn the US government plans on blowing the town off the map if the monster mammoth can’t be contained. Heroics are in order. Tom Skerritt shows up as the lovable family grandpa and there’s a whole bunch of stupidity making things a little enjoyable. My dude, Vincent Ventresca, has fun with his role as the goofy/scatterbrained father but it’s not as fun as it wants to be.
aka Man-Eater
⭐️⭐️1/2
A group of students head into a Cold War era bunker for a research project with their professor coordinating the experience. The film opens with the off-camera eating of a baby cut out of the mother’s belly… so you know things will not end well for the gaggle of gals. There’s no cellphones and nobody was told where they were going so these idiots pretty much fucked themselves by undertaking a weekend trip locked in a bunker for their thesis. Listen. I’m not saying anyone deserves the horrific tortures that befall these poor ladies, but there’s a point where your inability to survive just becomes annoying and the shits I give about you vanish. If the location and secrecy weren’t sending off an explosive chorus of warning bells then the creepy-ass guide that leads them into the bunker should have been the final straw but it’s not and these idiots intrude on the stomping grounds of a murder-happy cannibal. Horrible dialogue and a bunch of graphic death will have any spaghetti nightmare enthusiast smiling because as dumb as it all may be, if you grew up with the splatter from The Boot, you’ll be right at home. The graphic violence is mostly practical effects work and the setting is pretty cool but the boogeyman is pretty lame. Just looks like some dude who used to live in the woods with the Wrong Turn clan but now beats his wife in their New Jersey apartment. Pretty much doomed from the start anyways when you’re standing in the shadow of George Eastman. Still, low expectations should lead to a good time. “I had to team up with the shit-head stoner!”
aka Horrible/Anthropophagus 2/The Grim Reaper 2/Monster Hunter
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
More ridiculous fun from D’Amato and Eastman, serves as a spiritual sequel to their splattery classic, Anthropophagus. Eastman is a hard-to-kill Greek psychopath being hunted down by a dedicated priest, portrayed by personal favorite Edmund Purdom. The film opens with Eastman getting his stomach ripped open on a cast-iron fence and wandering into the mansion of some suburbanites. Our towering creep has some unbelievable recuperative powers and wakes up in the hospital, ready to get his murder on. What follows is D’Amato’s bizarro take on Halloween. Eastman slaughters the hell out of a bunch of folks (Michele Soavi, among them) on his way back to the house he wandered into earlier. Not because he enjoys the family’s company or anything, but on his wanderings he recognizes the father’s car... which hit him earlier that night and drove on off. Of course mom and pop have gone down the road to a friend’s house to watch the Super Bowl, so he terrorizes the crippled and bedridden daughter, her annoying and curly-haired little brother and the dedicated babysitter instead. It doesn’t go the way its inspiration would have you expecting. Purdom eventually lets the local police force know they have a killer whose body can regenerate dead cells on their hands and they’re gonna need the help of the biochemist-priest who has been tracking him since he escaped from a Catholic laboratory (at least I like to imagine it was some sort of church-funded lab). He also lets them know they gotta kill the brain to kill the man, everything else will prove rather futile. Graphic violence and the American tradition of chowing down on spaghetti whilst watching the Super Bowl follows. Dumb as fuck and I wouldn’t change a damn thing about it.
