The Unkind (2021) (UK)

⭐️1/2

Six idiots partake in an Italian vacation, bunking down in a beautiful Italian villa one of them inherited. Of course the place has a bad history and of course the annoying dinks stir up some awfulness. Things start off with bisexual psychic Ashley having some strange visions and then their car gets fucked up and their phones have no signal. Surrounded by miles of forest, the wieners realize they’re pretty much stuck at the villa. While looking around the cavernous cellar for canned food, two of the dips go off to have sex. After a jump-scare ruins the anti-erotic bang session, the dude wanders away and finds a creepy-ass room filled with unsettling sketches and antiques. He also finds an altar where an ancient-lookin’ book is sinisterly displayed. Someday morons will learn to leave old-ass books alone, today is not that day. It’s a diary and it shares the story of the evil possession that went down at the location which ended in the death of a family and the slaying of a loved one. The disfigured witch is buried on the property (I mean, the place does have a crypt) and said book leads the group to her grave. Since folks don’t take supernatural things seriously, the murder-happy woman comes back and messy ends start hitting our heroes like any late 80s spaghetti nightmare. Awkward dubbing and dialogue will have you smiling as visions of Eurociné dance through your head. The dull opening stretch may try your patience but once the silly-lookin’ hell-bitch starts doing what she does best, things get a little better, but not much. Giggling ghost kids run around, security camera footage feels incredibly out of place, there’s a mannequin room, everyone acts like an idiot in between unconvincingly acting like a human and anytime action fires up, the “drama” takes you right out of it. More lame than anything, even if it did give off some vibes that were right up my alley.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988) (Hong Kong)

aka Terror Serpent

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

One of those pesky secret formulas/mechanisms that causes things to grow to ridiculous sizes ends up in the hands of a little girl and she accidentally zaps her pet snake (and best friend) with whatever the formula/mechanism is because how else are you gonna explain a monster snake causing a ruckus. The terrorists responsible for stealing and losing the formula set their sights on the girl but her colossal reptilian protector has other plans. The head of the evil organization knows if he has control of the formula, he will have control of the world’s food supply and that will give him power. He expresses this much in the opening. What follows is bullshit…glorious bullshit. Godfrey Ho does what he does best and massacres a Taiwanese film by the name of King of the Serpents to unleash trash bliss. The opening credits are set to music that sounds like you’re rushing through a level of Contra after ingesting all of your brother’s cocaine (you thought it was sugar). The head of the terrorist organization gives a performance that will go down in history as so bad it transcends talent and becomes mythical. The young girl communicates with her huge reptile which nods and shakes its head and sometimes shrieks and keeps it in the family shed because there’s no way her mother would approve. A dull-as-dirt American special agent badass (Ted Fast) shows up to help the scientists and military who lost the formula. An inspector is also looking into things and forms a relationship with a lab worker who was a reluctant agent for the terrorist organization. All of this loosely comes together with scenes of the age-old kinship between girl and snake. The snake gets even larger after a trap set by the villains goes wrong and things get even dumber. There’s also massive collateral damage presented on a budget. Good times but as it goes with most of these Ho-downs, it somewhat overstays its welcome.

Savage Harvest (1994) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A group of young folks head out to the family property of one of the girls to help her relative clean out an old barn. Sometime in the 1830’s, after escaping with some of his tribe from the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee elder started messing around with dark magic and summoned a devil. Now the land is cursed and wouldn’t ya know it; the demon made up of the souls of evil people has been unleashed. Possession and splatter follows. The youngsters find themselves unable to leave and relying on Uncle Gary’s notes on the native people’s legends to outlast the slowly growing number of violent monsters they once called their friends. Impressive low-budget horror from Eric Stanze doesn’t bend the knee to its limitations and shows just what the hell a whole lotta initiative can pull off. It’s by no means perfect but it’s still a tight bit of backyard creativity.

Radioactive Cannibal Vikings from Hell (2007) (Sweden)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Four homicidal criminals decide to lay low after they murder a roadside sausage saleswoman. A dirt road layered with nails forces them to stop in what looks to be a one-home village. Said village served as a dumping ground for nuclear waste and the inhabitants have been transformed into hard-to-kill mutant Viking cannibals. Two of the gang get captured by the plastic-helmet-wearing creeps and tough as nails leader, Trash, doesn’t plan on leaving her soldiers to a horrible death. Zero-budget stupidity features a man-eating elk, a machine gun named Daddy Killcount, lovely special effects and the last minute appearance of an ancient Viking zombie. It runs just under thirty minutes so it never overstays its welcome.

Queen of Spades (2021) (Canada)

⭐️1/2

Bloody-Mary-adjacent boogeywoman, the Queen of Spades, can supposedly be summoned after performing a ritual. It involves a queen of spades playing card, a candle, drawing a door and a staircase on a mirror and then following that up with saying the name a few times in your standard well-lit darkness. Conjuring up the creepy creeper will have her granting you a wish if she is at peace but if she’s not… well, you’re just fucked. Four teenage idiots do just that and unleash the ancient evil on themselves and their loved ones. They learn the name after witnessing some kid jump off the roof of a community center they’re hanging around, it being the last words they hear from him before they flee to avoid the police they called. One gets interested in what the dude said and looks into the Russian legend of the kid-killing woman who ended up facing mob justice and horrible torture. Seeing YouTube views in their future, they get going with the spooky shenanigans. Oh man, they’re so fucked. Our lead is a mopey thirteen-year-old dope by the name of Anna who treats her hard-working mother like shit (I know that’s just what teenagers do… still doesn’t make you want to root for ‘em) and just kinda sucks at life. The jokester of the group gets marked first with an open sore on his arm and comes to Anna for help. She brushes him off, thinking he’s being an ass (a normal human would see the kid’s anxiety as very real) and acts all surprised when he collapses from a heart attack after doing weird shit in front of the mirror. This girl is wet dog shit on a white couch. The smart kid (he has glasses) reaches out to the author of a book he read on the subject and is told they’re pretty much boned and they should make their peace. Anna’s mom thinks the surviving kids are messing with her daughter but she also has to work so she lets them off with a warning about ending all the foolishness. The creepy lady begins showing up in reflective surfaces kinda looking like the spooky lady from the Insidious films who ended up being a serial killer in drag… I think… I watch a lot of movies. Mom eventually gets creeped out, realizes shit has gotten weird and actually takes a day off to help her daughter out of this paranormal predicament she’s gotten herself in. Everyone seems to be heavily sedated and pissed-off at each other and even when things should be picking up, it never transitions out of first gear and just keeps chugging along. There’s a walkie-talkie scene that works a bit and creepy-ghost-lady™ may be lazy but them bitches be somewhat effective anyways. I don’t know, take a nap instead.

Planet of the Sharks (2016) (USA)

⭐️1/2

In the near future, global warming has caused extensive flooding and the planet earth is now 98% covered in water. The apex predator of the sea is now the dominant species on this liquid wasteland and the remaining human race is forced to fight for their lives on floating towns. On top of raising temperatures and a dwindling water supply, a mutated alpha shark has become leader of all sharkdom and a small group of scientists are the only thing that offer any sign of hope for humanity’s future. A lone survivor of the recently shark-destroyed Junk City is rescued by a rugged ship captain named Barrick who operates alongside the research facility Vestron Station working recovery and salvage to help them build some planet-saving CO2 scrubbing missile. The somewhat creole ruler (and best character) of the main city Salvation, prides herself in shark killin’ and doesn’t take the possible threat of a shark army seriously. It doesn’t end well for her and her clan of extreme fishermen. There’s a lot of talk between minimal shark attacks brought to life by laughable cgi and folks standing around looking pretty concerned as cast members get eaten. Not so much Deep Blue Sea but way more like Waterworld with 10% of the action, 5% of the talent and 1% of the budget. It’s more boring than bad but Angie Teodora Dick is wonderful for the brief time we get to spend with her as the displaced Louisianan and they get some points for their ambitions and the charmingly dumb climax that unfortunately just keeps going.

Offerings (1989) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oklahoma-shot slasher borrows heavily from John Carpenter’s Halloween and fails miserably. Luckily because of that failure, it comes off like a Bizarro World version of the ‘78 classic and works for the trash-film-loving crowd. Young Johnny has a shitty home life and finds some respite in the company of a kindhearted neighborhood girl named Gretchen. Dickhole kids being dickholes leads to an accidental tumble down a well for the quiet and already-displaying-signs-of-a-psychopath Johnny. Never the same after the fall, Johnny is eventually placed into a sanitarium following the murder and partial eating of his mother. Ten years after that, Johnny escapes and heads back home. He begins picking off the former dickhole kids (now jerkoff young adults) and leaving various body parts for Gretchen as tokens of appreciation. The only hope Gretchen has is placed in the protection of the neighborhood’s overweight sheriff (yay!). The basic plot gives you some morsels of similarities but there’s enough there to tell yourself it’s kind of trudging its own path. Denial can only get you so far and there’s so much shit going on just outside of that narrative trail it becomes hilarious. The disturbance of a family member’s grave, John’s psychiatrist joining the hunt, the eating of live animals, and the climatic shooting of the hulking killer all make their way into the film just shot with far less talent. The dug up grave scene finds the cemetery caretaker an overacting and mugging weirdo, playing the scene for laughs. John’s psychiatrist is no Dr. Loomis (in any form he’s ever taken) and becomes an afterthought as the husky sheriff takes over the role of hero (something I’m very thankful for). There’s no discarded dog carcass discovered as the killer’s meal, instead it’s a few ducks by a pleasant pond. And that climatic shooting is a slow motion mess with one of the least threatening hulking killers I’ve ever seen. They also throw in some variations on Carpenter’s now legendary score and briefly mention Gretchen having some psychic powers. Sure. Why the hell not? Fat law officers and pizza with human toppings aside, Offerings is in no way a good movie. Even if it wasn’t a jumbling of a far superior film and stood on its own merits, it would still be called crap. But somehow, it works.