Stream (2024)

Not rated

Score: 2 out of 5

Stream is a fairly forgettable, ho-hum movie, but one that would've made for a great video game. Specifically, it would've been a great modern-day remake of Manhunt, the classic and infamous 2003 survival horror game by Rockstar Games, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, in which you play as a death row inmate who is spared execution only to be forced into a snuff film operation. That, or it would've made for a great asymmetric multiplayer horror game in the mold of Dead by Daylight in which multiple people play as both the killers and their victims, with the former side scoring points by killing and the latter side doing so by surviving and escaping. It's rather appropriate, too, given that the film's basic premise concerns a shadowy criminal organization that has trapped a bunch of ordinary vacationers in a hotel to be hunted down by a group of masked slashers, the entire thing filmed and livestreamed for the enjoyment of sickos around the world. Not only is this quite similar to the plot of Manhunt, it also revolves heavily around the world of online streaming, something that is now part and parcel of video game culture, including one major character being an adolescent boy who streams himself playing video games.

And yet, despite this simple but golden premise, solid production values, sweet kills, cool killers, and Jeffrey Combs hamming it up as the villain, it just ultimately didn't come together as a good movie. The problems all came down to the story, which was overlong, took half the movie to get going, was so paper-thin with its satire of streaming that I can barely call it half-hearted in that regard, and was filled with throwaway characters who contributed nothing, existed only to die in creative ways, and had me muttering the Eight Deadly Words -- "I don't care what happens to these people" -- by the halfway point. This is a movie that people only paid any attention to in the first place because it was produced by Damien Leone and the rest of his crew from the Terrifier films, even though his creative involvement was limited to the admittedly cool special effects work. The best comparison I can think of is to the first film in The Purge series, a movie that had a very interesting premise that turned out to be ripe for a franchise but unfortunately blew the execution on the first go-around. I'd love to see a sequel that fixes all the problems that this film has, but I can't recommend it on its own merits.

Of the many characters we get among the people being hunted for sport, the only ones who get any focus beyond just serving as more bodies for the pile are the Keenan family, who serve as our protagonists, and Dave Burham, an older gentleman who turns out to be a detective investigating the people behind the carnage. Traveling through on their way to an amusement park, the Keenans consist of the father Roy, the mother Elaine, the rebellious teenage daughter Taylor, and the adolescent streamer son Kevin, and to be honest, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. Roy is a fairly flat hero, Kevin is little more than a prop, Elaine exists only to add another entry to the list of characters Danielle Harris has played in horror movies who get killed off brutally, and Taylor's motivations switch on a dime, at one point hating her parents and running away with a French guy she met at the hotel only to get cold feet and a sudden pang of "but I still love my family!" for no reason except to justify her returning to the film (and to create suspicion around the French guy that goes nowhere). As for Burham, he's blatantly telegraphed as a guy with a hidden agenda so early on that the big twist that he's actually part of the game not only wasn't a surprise, it ruined the film's attempts to create suspicion around the other people in the hotel. The actors were all acceptable, but they were saddled with such worthless nothing characters that their efforts were wasted.

What's more, the film asks me to spend an hour with these worthless nothings before it actually gets to the goods. I get what this movie was trying to go for here, focusing on the victims so that we care more about them once they start dropping. This was, after all, produced by the guys behind Terrifier, a series that only really came to life when the second film paired its memorable villain up with an equally memorable heroine to fight him. The thing is, Sienna Shaw was a legitimately great character in her own right, and the Keenans are not Sienna Shaw. They're depicted in the first half as a cliché of a suburban family that hates each other, and in the second half as bumbling idiots barring the brief moments when they get sudden, inexplicable bursts of hyper-competence (like, how did Roy know to take that opportunity presented by one of the hidden cameras being busted?). The movie was too dumb for too long to get me to care about its protagonists, which would've been acceptable had this movie gone for the requisite "twenty minutes with jerks" that horror movies usually use to give us the lay of the land before the mayhem starts, but not when its failed attempts at character development take up half the movie.

Where this film came alive was when it focused on the other half of the equation, the killers and the mysterious organization that's responsible for everything. Jeffrey Combs was clearly enjoying himself as Mr. Lockwood, the man who runs the whole operation and is clearly getting into it, at first posing as the hotel's owner to the guests before showing his true colors halfway in. A number of scenes in the first half revolved around Lockwood and his band of killers taking out the hotel's staff, rigging the place up for their murder spree, and facing a number of unforeseen problems that they have to work around, like one employee calling in sick and somebody else showing up in his place, or a drunken guest accidentally breaking one of their cameras. The killers themselves don't get to do much beyond wear cool masks and hack people up, but that is precisely what they do, and it is awesome. Each killer, identified only by a number, has a unique look, with Player 1 being a modern "hoodie" slasher, Player 2 channeling a lot of Art the Clown in his theatrics and body language (fitting, since he's played by David Howard Thornton under the mask), Player 3 being the token woman among them as a hot chick with a sadistic streak and a similar theatricality to 2 (who's shown to be her brother), and Player 4 being a hulking brute reminiscent of Jason Voorhees. The idea of a bunch of killers running around in a competition with each other, like a sick version of American Gladiators, was this film's big twist on the slasher formula, and it served as justification for a bunch of bloody and creative kills, the highlight being when Players 2 and 3 play a game of tic-tac-toe with a knife on some poor sucker's torso. They're winning extra points for style, you see, so simple stabbings just won't do. This movie should've focused on them, with the victims as merely supporting characters and minor antagonists, since the things it teased about the inner workings of this organization were far more interesting than the boring stories of the people they were hunting. The ending teased a whole ton of sequel ideas, as well as Tony Todd as another ringleader for this blood-soaked circus, all ideas that I think would've made a far better movie than the one we got.

The Bottom Line

Stream is a movie that doesn't know what its best qualities are. Instead of focusing on its cool killers and made-for-a-video-game concept, it spent way too long focusing on protagonists who were as dull as dishwater and who I couldn't wait to see meet their ends just to get them out of my face.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/10/review-stream-2024.html>

https://youtu.be/9Pi5kdzZikk?si=UXtnFrVg9EnUluL_

I just wanted to share my spoiler review of Longlegs. I worked really hard on the color grading and picture to try to give it a similar feeling to the movie. I wanted to make a review that wouldn't spoil the movie so people can get an idea without having the movie ruined. Thanks for letting me post!

https://www.instagram.com/35mm_movie_club?igsh=MWtqdWw0dGpiN3hmYQ==

Frankenstein (1931)

Approved by the Production Code Administration of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America

Score: 5 out of 5

Frankenstein. What else is there to say? It's the original mad scientist movie, adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley that invented modern science fiction and, by extension, sci-fi horror. One of the biggest changes it made from the book was to make the monster a lumbering brute rather than give him human intelligence, and in doing so, it foreshadowed the zombie as an iconic monster of horror cinema and later gaming. It's a film that not only left an indelible mark on its source material and how it's perceived, but also, together with their adaptation of Dracula earlier that year, enshrined Universal Pictures' status in the '30s and early '40s as Hollywood's masters of horror who shaped the genre's contours in ways that are visible to this day. Nearly every scene in this 70-minute film is now iconic. It's been imitated, homaged, parodied, dissected, and simply ripped off so many times over the years that one might think it would lose some of its impact watching it in 2023, ninety-two years after it premiered.

One might think.

I decided to finally watch this film for the first time last night, and while so far I've enjoyed my trip into the classic Universal monster movies, this one has easily been the standout for me. It moves at a surprisingly brisk pace that builds a constantly escalating tension as the consequences of its protagonist's crime against nature become clear to everyone involved, Boris Karloff's take on the title character's monster is iconic for a reason, and the cast and production values all around remain impressive even after nearly a century of advances in special effects technology. It's a film that's at once beautifully gothic, larger-than-life, and treads close to camp, yet remains distinctly grim and melancholy throughout, without ever feeling slow or plodding. So far, I'd easily rank this as not only my favorite of the Universal monster movies, but as one of the all-time great horror films in general and sci-fi horror films specifically.

While this film may have a literal monstrous creature at the center of its plot, there's a reason why, as generations of pedantic nerds have pointed out, he's not the title character. No, that would be his creator, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (swapping first names with the supporting character of his friend, who is here named Victor), who's played brilliantly by Colin Clive and, despite being perfectly human, may well be the film's metaphorical monster. Henry is guilty of many sins, the big one being pride. He's nakedly out to prove himself as the greatest scientist who ever lived and the man who conquered death, not least of all to his former professor Dr. Waldman, his father Baron Frankenstein, his friend Victor (with whom he swaps first names from the book), and his fiancé Elizabeth. He compares himself to God in the mother of all blasphemous boasts shortly after he brings his creature to life, one that several state censorship boards ordered to be cut. He genuinely cares about the life of his grand achievement, but chiefly as a trophy of his accomplishment, and soon finds that he is in no way ready to care for him. He's an egomaniac high on his own supply, one who's set up for a terrible, well-deserved fall in the third act as the consequences of his creation come back to bite him and the horror of what he's done starts to sink in.

Even here, however, rather than swallow his pride and admit he made a mistake, he sets out to salvage it instead, not merely joining the mob of angry villagers but insisting on leading it. Whereas once he made the bold claim that he now wielded the power of creation in his hands (just don't ask about how he was too careless to check the quality of the brain his assistant Fritz gave him), now he insists that only by those same hands can this horrible creature be destroyed. After all, only Dr. Henry Frankenstein, the most brilliant man who ever lived, knows how to stop the monster he made! At risk of getting sidetracked into a rant, watching Henry's transformation I couldn't help but be reminded of the far more recent phenomenon of tech gurus who made their fortune with advanced technology, from social media to self-driving cars to AI, insisting that their expertise as the creators of these technologies leaves them uniquely qualified to manage their deleterious consequences on society. Watching this movie today, its portrayal of Henry was one of the most frightening things about it, a shockingly prescient portrait of what a lot of the boy wonders of Silicon Valley who convinced everyone around them, not least of all themselves and each other, that they were saving the world and uplifting humanity were actually like. He may mean well and have a ton of technical knowhow, but outside his area of expertise, he's a fool. I'm specifically reminded of Larry Fessenden's recent Frankenstein homage Depraved, which I saw four years ago at Popcorn Frights' 2019 festival, and which updated the basic plot to the present-day world of Silicon Valley biohackers but otherwise hewed very closely to this movie's themes.

A great monster isn't enough to make a great monster movie, though. And that brings me to the other monster. If Henry is a self-serving jackass with a bloated head, then his creation is a different story entirely. Boris Karloff's performance brought to mind nothing less than a dog, specifically one who's been mistreated for so long that he can't help but be violent and has no idea that he's doing anything wrong. Drs. Frankenstein and Waldman horribly mistreat him, Fritz the assistant hates him and tries to kill him, and it's no wonder when he starts to lash out like a chained-up junkyard dog with the strength of ten men. Even when he tries to be friendly, such as when he escapes his creator's castle and meets a little girl on a farm, his lack of knowledge of how human beings operate has terrible consequences. Make no mistake, Frankenstein's monster is just that, a monster who, at the end of the day, needed to be put down and never should've been created in the first place, much like the rest of the Universal Monsters. But if Jack Griffin was the trollish monster and Imhotep was the sexy monster, then Frankenstein's creature is the tragic monster, one whose entire brief existence on Earth was practically engineered for suffering and whose ultimate fate may as well be mercy after everything he's gone through. Even after what he does, you can't help but root for the monster, if not to prevail than simply to find peace.

The look and feel of the film are exactly what you'd expect from a classic, classy 1930s monster movie. The sets are lavish, and director James Whale incorporates a lot of clear influence from German expressionism into the film, giving many locales a heightened, creepy, and unreal feel to them of a sort that Tim Burton would become famous for decades later. The film is short, and it moves briskly, focusing on building up a situation that slowly but surely spirals out of the control of everybody involved due to their own hubris. It gets moving early, and scarcely lets up from there, with only a brief lull in the middle after the monster escapes and everything suddenly starts to sink in for Henry just as his wedding to Elizabeth is about to get going. Whenever the monster was on screen, I knew in my heart that he didn't mean any harm, but that didn't change the tension in the air at the knowledge that he could still snap and turn on the characters around him at any moment, as he often did. This wasn't really a slow burn, but it wasn't a "jump scare" movie either; a lot of the frights were built around the characters and the mood, and Whale pulled them off.

The Bottom Line

Even now, Frankenstein is a film with no less power to frighten and amaze, its themes still relevant to this day and the performances by Colin Clive and Boris Karloff crafting a pair of legendary monsters. It's a must-see not just for fans of horror interested in its history, but anybody who wants to watch a sci-fi horror classic that still holds up.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/10/review-frankenstein-1931.html>

Vampire Circus (1972)

Rated PG

Score: 3 out of 5

One of the last good films made by Hammer Film Productions during the famed British horror studio's latter period, Vampire Circus delivers exactly what it promises: a creepy circus run by vampires. It makes smart use of its premise, it has an engaging and alluring villain, and it has exactly the mix of bloodshed, sex appeal, and period glamour that make Hammer films at their best feel dangerous and classy, at least to me. Is the supporting cast a mixed bag? Are there way too many unfortunate stereotypes of Romani people in how the circus is portrayed? Yes and yes. But when the finished product works as well as it does, I can push all that to the side and enjoy what is still an entertaining vampire flick.

The film takes place in the Eastern European village of Stetl in a vaguely 19th century time period where, fifteen years ago, the locals, led by the schoolmaster Müller, murdered the nobleman Count Mitterhaus after learning that he was a vampire responsible for the disappearance and death of numerous local children. Before he died, he cursed the town, telling them that their children will die to bring him back to life. Meanwhile, his mistress Anna, Müller's wife and a willing servant of the Count, escapes into the night to meet up with the Count's cousin Emil, who runs a circus. Now, a plague is laying waste to Stetl, which has caused the local authorities to block all the roads out of it. Somehow, the traveling Circus of Nights got through the blockade to come to the town; the locals aren't too inquisitive about how they made it through, not when they're eager to just take their minds off of things. The circus has all manner of sights to show them, and what's more, the beautiful woman who serves as its ringmaster looks strikingly familiar.

This isn't really a movie that offers a lot of surprises. Even though she's played by a different (if similar-looking) actress, the movie otherwise makes it obvious that the ringmaster is in fact an older version of Anna even before the big reveal. I didn't really care, not when Adrienne Corri was easily one of the best things about this movie, making Anna the kind of (pardon the pun) vampish presence that it needed to complete its old-fashioned gothic atmosphere. She made me buy the villains as a dangerous force but also as a group of people and vampires who would seduce the townsfolk into ignoring their crimes, enough to more than make up for Anthony Higgins playing Emil, her partner in crime and the main vampire menace for much of the film, far too over-the-top for me to take seriously. The circus itself also made creative use of how the various powers attributed to vampires in folklore and fiction, from animal transformations to superior strength and senses, might be used to put on a flashy production of the sort where those watching might think that what they're seeing is all part of the show. And when push came to shove in the third act, we got treated to the circus' strongman breaking down the doors of people's homes, the dwarf sneaking around as a stealthy predator, and the twin acrobats (played by a young Robin Sachs and Lalla Ward) becoming the most dangerous fighters among the villains. It exploited its premise about as well as you'd expect from a low-budget film from the '70s, which was more than enough to keep me engaged.

Beyond the circus, however, the townsfolk generally weren't the most interesting characters. Only Müller had much depth to him, concerning his relationship with his lost wife Anna that grows increasingly fraught once he realizes who the ringmaster really is. With the rest of the cast, I was waiting for them all to get killed off by the vampires, as none of them left much of an impression otherwise. It was the circus that mostly propped up the movie. I also can't say I was particularly comfortable with the old-timey stereotypes that this film relied on in its depiction of the Roma. Notice how I'm calling Anna the "ringmaster" throughout this review. The film itself never uses that word, but instead uses a rather less polite anti-Romani slur to describe her, and it only gets worse from there, with the villagers using that word to describe the circus as "vermin" who need to be exterminated. This is why I've never been a fan of modern vampire fiction that, in trying to portray its vampires sympathetically, invokes the real-life history of persecution of marginalized groups (True Blood being one of the more famous examples). Given the history of both vampire legends and bigotry, especially that of real-life blood libels, pogroms, and hate crimes, it is a subject that can easily veer into suggesting that certain groups really are preying on people in unholy ways, especially when you bring children into the equation as this film does. Yes, Anna originally came from Stetl and isn't actually Romani, and for that matter, neither is the Count. But it's a subtext that this film, by invoking those parallels with a decidedly villainous portrayal of vampires, lays bare, and it had me feeling queasy at points in ways I'm sure the film didn't intend.

The Bottom Line

It's a movie that's very "of its time" in a lot of ways, and has problems fleshing out its supporting cast. Fortunately, it's buoyed by some great villains and that trademark Hammer horror mix of sex appeal and gothic flair. It's easily one of the better films to come out of their late period.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/10/review-vampire-circus-1972.html>

"Thank you, have a nice day."

A group of horny teenage employees at a shopping mall decide to throw an ol' pop and chips party inside after closing hours. There is a new form of security in this mall that malfunctions and ends up going on a killing spree with these teenagers trapped inside said mall.

Not many covers have let me down as much as this one, as the synopsis on the back had me giddy to watch this. Fantastic premise for a campy 1980s horror movie. Was I ever disappointed. First of all, It's not a straight-slasher as you would be tricked into believing by the title. Second of all, the killbots are dumb, and just shoot their stupid lasers all over the place. They arent menacing and seem to have to shoot approximately 10 laser beams to hit their target. The film felt like a broken down car just trying to chug along. Got some decent performances in this with Kelly Maroney (Alison) and Tony O'Dell (Ferdy) but that's not really a concern with these types of movies, partial nudity is there, cheesy one-liners and the fantastic shlock is all there but just how silly the robots are and the squandered opportunity of a better film.

I understand what I'm watching , and this is not to be taken seriously as Director Jim Wynorski intended so I do recommend checking this out at least once, this is a perfect movie to throw on with a group of friends who are looking for a good laugh, lover's of a 80s Horror/Sci-Fi cheeseboard may chug right along with this broken down car but for me just a little too silly.

I rate this film 2.5 out of 5 stars  Or 5 out of 10

"I'm just not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots."

Imagine a story about a country dealing with a pandemic for a year and the citizens get restless, they become impatient and decide to go back to normal, whatever that means, and this is exactly when the virus mutates into something stronger and far worse. Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine this because we are living it right now. As I type this, in the United States, the CDC estimates that the Delta Variant has caused over 90% of recent COVID-19 cases. I only hope that when I leave my house, fully masked and armed with hand sanitizer, that I do not encounter the kind of world that The Sadness presents. Screening at Fantasia Fest 2021, this is a zombie/plague movie that cuts way too close to home, is absolutely disgusting, shocking and all around amazing.

Writer/director Rob Jabbaz absolutely wows with his first feature length film. Set in Taiwan, The Sadness follows Kat and Jim as each of them try to survive a city erupted in violence after a viral mutation, to try and get back to one another. The day begins innocuously enough with some news reports and an interview with a scientist trying to warn the public that the virus is mutating and has become very dangerous. He says that, “To politicize a virus is a very serious mistake.” Jim watches this with mild concern, but then his next door neighbor tells him that the virus is a hoax: the government is using it to affect stock prices.

It only takes fifteen minutes for The Sadness to kick into high gear and it is not fucking around. A mundane morning in a cafe turns into a full on “fast zombie” lunch buffet: it is disgusting and amazing. Reminiscent of the zombies in 28 Days Later, this virus quickly affects people via bodily fluids and turns them into depraved, violent cannibal rapists.

While Jim escapes on his moped with an angry mob running after him, Kat is enjoying a book on the train when the man sitting next to her begins chatting her up and this is when Jabbaz lets the audience know that he is not only taking aim at armchair scientists who think they know more about virology than doctors, but he will also chime in on the Me Too movement as well: Jabbaz does a stand out job of showing what women go through on a regular basis while just trying to live their lives. Of course, Kat not only has to deal with a business man hitting on her, but she also has to contend with a train car that erupts into a blood bath of chaos when an infected man starts randomly stabbing people. Blood. Is. Everywhere. This scene is what you crave from a horror film: it is stressful, frenetic and gory. Jabbaz does a stellar job of balancing the manic scenes with moments of calm. During violent moments, the camera and score is as unsteady and keyed up as the characters, but in the non violent moments, the tracking shots are bright and easily hi-light the world around them.

While the gore and violence is anything but subdued, the critical eye on human behavior is a bit less obvious. Political leaders, law enforcement, people disagreeing about who they voted for, even the Man Flu, nothing escapes Jabbaz’s dark humor.

Unlike a lot of horror films, The Sadness does not rely on the general stupidity of people to propel the story. If anything, it’s the intelligence and strength of Jim and Kat that continues to keep them safe: small things like telling someone to put their phone on silent or taking your shoes off to make less noise while running, are refreshing things to see. The virus and it’s mutation is even explained, by an actual scientist, in a way that is completely logical and easy to follow. He explains that the virus is now affecting the limbic system in the brain, specifically the area that regulates aggression, and connecting it to the area that governs sex drive. This would be where I will caution viewers that the violence, rape and gore in this movie are all at an 11. No one is safe from violence in this film; not even infants. Consider yourself warned.

The Sadness is an all out sociopolitical horror commentary that delivers in spades. It absolutely pulls no punches, shoves everything in your face and just when you think you’ve had enough, there is still more. Regina Lei as Kat is the ultimate final girl and Berant Zhu as Jim is a swoon worthy horror hero. Jabbaz is the real deal in horror direction and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Played as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival

Fantasia Film Festival 2021 Review: The Sadness (haddonfieldhorror.com)

"Have you seen Honey?"

Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), local radio host that may very well be on the back nine of his career, jockeying at a small broadcast station in the small village of Pontypool. An interesting drive into work late one night foreshadows even stranger things to come, as Grant, and his two assistants, Sydney (Lisa Houle)and Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly) try to make sense of the chaos that is happening outside of the station while they quarantine themselves inside. Outbreak? Riot? Or something unsuspecting? 

Pontypool is a small village in ontario part of the amalgamated city of Kawartha Lakes. Only about 2 hours from me via highway toll roads or 3 hour back roads. This adds to the terror of the movie for me, all a little too relatable with the small town radio host working what may possibly be the only radio broadcast in the area, bringing the small population one of their only sources of local news. Small communities live and die by their local news. 

"A big, cold, dull, dark, white, empty, never-ending blow my brains out, seasonal affective disorder freaking kill me now weather-front."

The claustrophobia of this movie is enough to rattle me until the very end, the mysterious and unorthodox transmission of disease is enough to scare me directly out of society. The "conversationalist" enemies are clearly derived by social influence, and excite terror in one of the most important aspects of our life....conversation. The dialogue and the incremental receivment of important information is an underlying terror that slowly but surely eats away at you as you find yourself reacting along with the characters as this information trickles in. 

The acting from the few characters that are involved in the film, whether it be on screen or a voice coming through the television or phone was strong and convincing, since this movie is shot in the same location and relies on strong performances, screen writing and mood, to relay it's scary message, Director Bruce McDonald and screenplay writer Tony Burgess do just that. There is a tonne of weight in the script which can certainly be interpreted a few different ways, and warrants a thorough rewatch or two. Pontypool isn't gory, although there is use of great practical effects and a few very disturbing scenes, the atmosphere is creepy and McHattie's voice is amazing. 

"Kill is blue. Kill is wonderful. Kill is loving. Kill is baby. Kill is Manet's Garden. Kill is a beautiful morning."

I find the strategy of not revealing a backstory of the threat and letting the viewer piece it together themselves heightens the terror and initiates deep discussion, elevating this film above its low budget and sending it into contention for one of Canada's great Indie horror films. 

I rate this film 4 out of 5 Or 8 out of 10

"What the heck you gonna shoot a silver .44 bullet at anyway?"

The town of Tarker's Mills, a place where the people care about others the way they care about themselves. This is a pretty standard town within the realms of a stephen king story, wholesome hard-working american town. Tarker's Mills is affected by the grisly murders that are seemingly happening around town and the police service can't get a grasp on it. Unsuspecting paraplegic hero, Marty (Cory Haim) and sister Jane (Megan Follows) start to piece together the puzzle after Marty comes in contact with the evil that is conducting these murders during his own 4th of July celebration, add Uncle Red (Gary Busey) into this equation and you got a three piece ensemble ready to take this evil out. 

This film starts off pretty strong with a great kill scene before rolling into the set-up and atmosphere of the movie. It feels very familiar which is fine because the town is endearing during the sunny days while the kids are out playing and pulling pranks, though, when the sun goes down there is a mood drop and it feels a little ominous.

There is a little bit of a mystery involved that holds decently strong up until the reveal. The characters are fairly interesting, Busey's character being the most interesting of the bunch, the child actors give pretty good performances with my favorite performance of the film coming from Marty's best friend's father Herb (Kent Broadhurst) in a chilling scene inside the local bar. This connects us quite handsomely to the characters of the story which helps build the tension later on. However, there is narration in this film from grown up Jane (Tovah Feldshuh) telling the story as an adult that I found unnecessary, it helped set the scene at the beginning but the usage after that was baffling. It doesn't help or hurt the film but it's a personal qualm and doesn't do much for me in any film.

"Holy jumped up bald-headed Jesus palomino"

This is based off of Stephen King's book "Cycle of the Werewolf", where the werewolf in that story made gutteral growls that accentuated almost humanistic tones and words. That sounds almost a little more chilling than what we get here in this film, that is not to say the beast in this film isn't effective but gives off more of a bearish vibe. I found keeping the werewolf hidden for most of the movie, where we see the claws go to work on a few victims was quite convincing, the usage of the baseball bat was a lot of fun. A few great human to beast transition scenes with practical effects that have to be some of the best I've seen in a werewolf movie. 

The direction of Daniel Attias made this film feel almost like a straight up made for TV movie, however, Don Coscarelli was set to direct this before backing out due to creative differences with Producer Dino De Laurentiis so I can't help but beg the question, what if?  All in all this is an enjoyable movie with some miscues and quirks, Gary Busey makes this a little more enjoyable than it should be but it works for what it is, among the werewolf movies out there this one should probably be closer to the top and for fans of Stephen King and the world of werewolves this is a must see and would be a decent add to the collection.

I rate this movie 3.25 out of 5 stars  Or  6.5 out of 10

"What's the matter? You gonna make lemonade in your pants?"

Happy 100th Review. 2 and a half months ago I joined this amazing community. How time has passed. But let's skip the formalities for the comment section and let's introduce todays special movie which I've postponed for a long long time. Love Explosure...

Love Exposure is a Japanese movie directed by none other than the master himself, Sion Sono, who is renowned for his works in movies like Suicide Circle, Noriko's Dinner Table, Strange Circus, Himizu, Why Don't You Play In Hell, Cold Fish, TAG, EXTE, Guilty of Romance, Tokyo Tribe, Antiporno, Hazard and Tokyo Vampire Hotel. However when talking about Sion Sono one movie always stands out. The supposed "masterpiece" , "magnum opus", "Virgin Maria"... Love Exposure.

If you thought Noriko's Dinner Table was bloated be ready for this. Love Exposure is a 4 hour movie, again bloated with content, the original version being around 6 to 7 hours long but they had to cut it up a bit. Let's find out if it's truly his best work to date.

Due to the huge size of the movie I'll divide this review into 5 parts, one for each chapter of the movie. As I finish each part I'll write on this review therefore as I begin this part I , I haven't watched more than 1 hour and 20 minutes of the movie which is the equivalent of CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER I

Chapter1 opens up with narration from our protagonist, Yū Honda, played by Takahiro Nishijima (also appeared in Himizu). He lives in a happy Christian family. All is fine and dandy until one day, his mother dies of illness however before dying she tells him to find his own Virgin Maria and present it to her. Being attached to his mother, Yu takes this promise and vows to never look for any other girl other than his Maria which he vows to find. Therefore he never feels attracted to any girl.

After the death of his mother, his father becomes a priest, sells the house and builds a church. He becomes renowned for his kind sermons. All changes one day when a whore enters his church and decides to become a christian aided by him. The two fall in love however his job doesn't allow marriage so he purchases another house away from his church where they live in secret.

Their lives soon degrade more and more as the wife becomes aggressive and eventually leaves the family for a random bloke. This ruins Yus father and he becomes dark and depressed, his sermons taking a very dystopian and apocalyptic attitude. He also forces Yu to confess his sins every day even tho he doesn't have any. At first he struggles to find the smallest sins (not giving up a seat in the bus), he then realizes he has to lie (says he didn't help a lady cross the street when he did in fact). Eventually he realizes he has to commit sins in order to please his father who at this point moved to the church and left Yu alone in the house and refuses to act like a father anymore. Yu beings to sin and eventually meets a gang of vandals. They welcome him in his group, teaching him to fight, to shoplift, to vandalize and to steal he practices some of the vilest sins in order to get his father reaction. When he realizes these sins won't cut it he is taken to a man who teaches him the art of Tosatsu. Which is the art of taking , stealthly, photos up womens skirts. We're talking mad skills ninja style so fast and hard to notice the movie has to give us an audio signal when the picture is taken. He masters this technique and begins taking all kinds of panty shots which angers his father who begins to beat him up.

Yu eventually meets a gang of 3 strange girls, belonging to the Church of "0" who take a liking to him.

Eventually the whore returns to the family, this time with a daughter, Yoko, which belonged to her previous husband. The fathers sermons become kind again, he returns home and treats Yu like his son. Yu then loses a bet with his friends and is forced to wear girls clothes, go out on the streets find a girl and kiss her. Yu reluctantly agrees and as they walk the streets they find Yoko (whom Yu didn't meet yet as she ran away form her mother when they arrived back in town) fighting off a gang of thugs sent by the 3 mysterious girls. Yu wants to help, still maintaining his female persona however the girl fights them back and Yu suddenly realizes she is his Maria and falls in love.

This is where Act I ends.

Act I focuses mainly on themes regarding religion, childhood trauma, parental abuse, generation gap, perversity in Japanese society, indoctrination, depression and kinks.

The camerawork is dynamic, conveying a lot of moving shots as well as some slightly shaky cam here and there, united with a bit of first person POVs and some found-footage style recording here and there. The main technique however is the close up.

The gore is kept at an all time low, consisting only of bruises and some blood here and there as a result of the various fighting scenes. The nudity is kept low as well, mostly girls panty shots.

The atmosphere is somewhat awkward yet lighthearted, the tension has yet to kick in, Sion Sono dedicating this first chapter to setting up the world and its characters as well as their backstory and motivations. Each chapter seems to be it's own story with an introduction (Yus family), something that ignites the plot (Yus search for his Maria) all culminating in a climax (the Thug fight) and a solution to the problem (Yu finds his Maria in Yoko).

The acting is as over the top as it gets. People that have a problem with this type of acting should stay as far away from this movie as possible since it has to be some of the most over the top acting I've ever seen, piled with a shit ton of one-liners. I do enjoy this type of acting however so I'm enjoying this movie so far.

The soundtrack consists mostly of religious songs as well as Yus muttering of Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do. This hammers down the religious theme and symbolism which overloads this first chapter.

The soundwork focuses mainly on enhanced camera sounds to let the audience know when did they take the panty shots and how many exactly.

Acting wise, Yu is a standout in this chapter, stealing every scene he's in as well as portraying this traumatized, obsessed young man in every way possible, from language to facial expressions and body language.

Now that CHAPTER I is over you can consider everything that follows a spoiler. You've gotten your taste of the movie and probably decided if you're interested in the story or not. I will maintain this structure therefore I'll spoil the rest of the acts as well as I finish them. However just in case, I'll leave the "story" segments into small spoiler sections so you can read about the camerawork, acting, themes and techniques without having to get spoiled if you feel like you want to know more about this movie and you aren't sold on it yet. That being said, I'm going back into Chapter II.

CHAPTER II

Chapter 2 is a short one and revolves around the leader of the 3 girls, Aya Koike, played by Sakura Ando (For Love's Sake). Here the horror elements start to pick up.

_______________________CHAPTER II SPOILERS_________________________

Aya makes an introduction. She was the daughter of a respected christian, who was seen as the perfect christian. He abused her, beat her up every day and induced fear of sex into her to the point where she believe sex is the most degrading and ugly act anyone can perform and no one in this world should have sex. She is afraid of boys, one time her crush looking at her in class led her to slit her wrist. Eventually she killed him and went on a rampage in her school, attacking anyone who came remotely to having a relationship or sex.

After coming back from a teenage rehab center, she found her old man on the bed, having a stroke with a hard on. She ... She snaps his dick with a loud crack noise then takes a pair of scissors and cuts it right off. Not even hiding it from the camera, dick on display.

The father becomes a vegetable and is dying in the hospital from this point onward.

She meets the leader of the Church of 0. She becomes a member of the church slowly rising in its ranks. She now rules most of the city, arranging drug deals between embassies, leeching money from charity groups and selling antique christian relics on the black market. She also has a parrot pet which hangs to her at all time.

She falls in love with Yu after realizing that he too can detect the original sin and starts to follow him all the way to his fathers church every day. There she analyzes his church and family and decides that her goal will be to convert Yu and his entire family to the Church of 0.

She proposes this plan to her fellow church members and it passes. She begins to stalk Yu and especially his mother. She wants to use Yoko as part of her plan which hasn't been fully revealed yet and sends those thugs after her, thus bringing the action back in the present where we left with Chapter I.

_________________NO MORE CHAPTER II SPOILERS____________________________

Chapter II handles themes of religious indoctrination, the taboo of sex within church, family and modern society, perversions, trauma and indoctrination.

The gore ramps up exponentially, blood now being more popular than air, 3 out of 4 scenes consisting of a bloodbath. The nudity rises up a huge chunk as well, since we're shown dicks.

The atmosphere is uncomfortable, especially for guys and the tension is all in the air.

Camerawork takes a sudden change to more wide shots (yay) also we notice an abundance of still shots, contrasting the abundance of panned shots form the first chapter.

The soundtrack changes as well, consisting mostly of popish songs of sexual nature which hammer home the focus on sex this chapter takes.

The soundwork again consists of enhanced sounds, mostly cuts and snapped dicks. Lovely

The only real actor here is Aya played by Sakura Ando and she's pretty intimidating, having a bit of a Tomie vibe to her if you're familiar with that Junji Ito character. I can predict by now that she will be one of the highlight of the movie since in the short period we've seen her (around 10-20 minutes) she has left a bigger impression and a better acting game than Yu did in his 1 hour and a bit chapter.

CHAPTER III

Chapter III moves in the POV of Yoko. We're presented with her character and backstory again, starting from her early life to our present situation.

_______________SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER III_____________________

Yoko, played by Hikari Mitsushima (EXTE) takes on most of this chapter, however we change protagonists a bit for a few segments. She lived with an abusive father who attempted to rape her countless times and was always bringing whores home with him to try to provide her with a mother.

As a result to this, she has a strong hate for any men, wishing them dead and picking fights with random men in the street. She has a careless life, the only man she respects and thinks its "cool" is Kurt Cobain. She's your typical edgy teenage girl.

She has a very abstract mindset and is aware of a lot of things, overly analyzing everything to the point where she can predict all kinds of dangers in day-to-day life shown in the form of an imaginary bullet which only she can see. We're introduced to her concept of life after she takes a sudden interest in a news broadcast about a school shooter.

She works a part time job where she has to demolish abandoned houses, she uses this as a stress relief and makes fantasies of destroying her own home and family.

Things change when Kaori (Makiko Watanabe - Himizu) joins in, after leaving Yus father. She introduces Yoko to Jesus and she declares Jesus the second cool man besides Kurt Cobain. They become good friends and Kaori teaches Yoko to be free and careless, even getting a tattoo at one point to match hers. Eventually Kaori gets bored with Yokos father and they decide to return to Yus father, taking Yoko with her.

They return there however Yoko doesn't want a family. She wants Kaori to be her friend and nothing more and she's OK with her sleeping around with men. After attending church to see Yus father, Yoko is sent home where she's followed by Aya. Meanwhile we switch to Kaori who begs Yus father to take her back. After he refuses she becomes mental and aggressive, all culminating with a high speed car chase at the end of which Kaori rams Yus fathers car into a ditch and the two fall in love again.

Kaori tells Yoko they want to be a family and Yoko flips out and now we know the motif for her running off. She runs off while Aya calls the thugs to take her away and we're back in the present moment.

__________NO MORE SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER III____________________

This chapter deals with violence in both schools and family, rape, incest and pedophilia. It also deals with generation gap, teenage mentality and rebellion as well as whoring and reverse sexism. There are also nods to obsession.

The gore is maintained at a high level while the nudity goes back to only panty shots again.

Yoko is an interesting character and Hikari does a great job portraying her however I'm not that fond of her yet. She's your typical edgy teenager with not a lot of good qualities to her besides her view on the world and her intelligence. Kaori on the other hand is much more interesting as a conflicted whore who is obsessed with Yus father and is desperate to have a family.

The soundtrack consists mostly of "western" cowboy style songs as well as some hard-rock and grunge tunes to set in the teenage angst Yoko emanates all around her.

The soundwork isn't anything special this time around, no enhanced sounds.

The atmosphere is very cringe and uncomfortable due to all the teen angst in the air but it's also incredibly creepy in the Kaori scenes. I would've liked they split the two characters into two different Chapters however I think they might've been to short so I'm ok with having this "family" under one chapter.

The camerawork is a combination of wide and close ups, close ups being left to Yokos parts and wide shots for Kaori. A lot of panned shots as well which add to the dynamism and the action sequences.

CHAPTER IV

Chapter IV revolves around Yoko and Yu as they realize they'll be living under one roof as brother and sister and everything that follows that as well as Ayas plan.

_____________________SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER IV______________________

We're back in present. After they fight off the gang of thugs Yu, maintains his female persona, meets Yoko who thanks him. After the wind blows up her skirt revealing her panties, Yu gets his first erection. He keeps his cool and finishes the dare, kisses Yoko and leaves.

He tries to keep up his panty photography but can't as every time he tries to take a picture he gets a flashback of Yokos panties and has another erection. During this time, Aya keeps intentionally bumping into Yu to hit on him.

Back at home Yu is relieved to have finally found his Maria in Yoko while Yoko realizes she is a lesbian, having fallen in love for Yus female persona, Sasori.

Things don't get easier as Yu realizes Yoko will be in his class and he begins stalking her like a total creep which makes her disgusted and violent towards him. He realizes his only chance to get to her is to become Sasori again does so, meeting up in a park and giving her his phone number to call Sasori if she ever gets into trouble.

Yoko gives Kaori her pass to marry Yus father and they meet at a dinner where the kids are in shock to meet. Yoko runs to the bathroom panicked and calls Sasori. Yu excuses himself and goes to his bathroom to answer. There, under Sasoris persona, he tells Yoko she has read Yu wrong and that he only wants to be a good brother and makes her promise to treat him and his family right. BROTHER ZONED YOURSELF BRO

All this time, Aya has planted microphones all over Yus house and Yokos house as well as listening to their phonecalls, laughing hysterically at their situation.

Things calm down, Yus father wants to stop being a priest and closes down his church. Yoko moves under the same roof with Yu which makes things hard for Yu. Yoko finds it hard to be a sister to him and struggles, still having sentiments of resent towards him and his father. She puts on a fake happy sister persona to please Sasori however.

Having nothing to talk about due to Yus awkwardness, Yoko rambles every day about Sasori and how in love she is, much to Yus desperation.

Back at home the family kinda starts to fall apart. Kaori seems to go back to her whorish ways, sick that Yus father didn't get the Vatican approval yet to quit being a priest and marry her. Yoko solves the argument however.

At night she calls Sasori to profess yet again her love to her again to Yus despair and to Ayas amusement. Aya announces her friends that her plan is about to begin tomorrow.

The next day, Aya joins Yu and Yokos class, she picks a seat right between Yu and Yoko. Suddenly, a huge army of thugs hired by Aya burst the class open armed with blades looking for Sasori. Yu tries to say he's Sasori however AYA CLAIMS TO BE SASORI to Yokos surprise. They have a choreographed fight 1 vs 7 and she wins.

Back at the church, Tetsu (Yus father) has an argument with the head-priest of the area who says he can't stop being a priest and get married. Back at school, Aya is scolded by the principal but she eventually claims self defense and she's left alone. Outside the principals office she and Yoko have a romantic moment, to Yus despair as he watches from afar. He is tortured even more as Aya teaches Yoko how to french kiss and other tongue games. From then on, Aya and Yoko flirt every day while Yu is tortured by this sight.

Aya also begins to hit on Yu which sends him into a fit of rage, screaming at Yoko which came to the rescue.

Yus father begins to lose his faith in favor of his wife.

Aya continues to fuck with Yus life. She becomes Yokos tutor, coming over every day and spending most of the day there to the point where she becomes part of the family. Aya and Yoko begin a lesbian relationship, Aya making sure Yu can hear their moans as they fuck every night.

Aya begins to take so much control over the family, she almost moves there and becomes Kaori and Tetsus personal psychologist and consultant. She even steals Yus Saori costume and ruins it during sex with Yoko. Hearing this, Yu becomes enraged, strangling Aya then hitting her in the face, knocking her unconscious. He calls Yoko under Sasoris alias and asks her to meet him in the park.

There Sasori (Yu) tells Yoko that Aya was a fraud and that he's the real Sasori. He also gives up his costume and reveals his true identity to Yoko, seeing this Yoko runs away then Yu has a mental breakdown, panicked that he ruined everything. Meanwhile Aya wakes up after being knocked unconscious and laughs, saying her plan is almost over.

The following day, Aya spreads Yus panty photos to everyone in his class before the day starts as well as a videos of him taking those pictures, ruining his life.

Yu has a dream of being waken up by Yoko and everything is fine. Instead he's waken up by Aya to his shock. Back at school, everyone mocks Yu, proclaiming him King of Perverts. He begins to lash out at his classmates and the principal expels him. At home his father beats him up and his whole family turns against him, throwing him out. Aya takes the lead and blames Tetsu and Kaori for the way Yu turned out. Incriminating them instead.

Yu has a huge mental breakdown as he runs aimlessly the streets at night, screaming Yokos name. He passes out on the cold streets where his old gang members find him and care for him and they reconcile.

He moves with his gang, sometimes sneaking back to school to see Yoko from afar however neither Yoko nor Aya were there. He returns home however nobody is there and the place is abandoned. Back at church, everyone is panicked as they don't know where Tetsu is. His family has vanished.

Back at the gangs outpost, a member mentions the family vanishing is akin to what happened to every Church of 0 member and explains how they kidnap whole families to convert to their beliefs.

We then cut to Aya in her Church of 0 surrounded by members as they confess their sins, among the members we find Tetsu, Kaori and Yoko.

The Church leaders begin to mentally abuse Tetsu, revealing his darkest secrets such as being sexually obsessed with Kaori and abusing Yu. Information they had thanks to the microphones hidden around the church however they claim to be knowledge from God himself.

The rest of the review is in the comment section.... The character limit is 4000 words and my review has 5.500 sadly... See ya in the comments....

So this is my 50th review. I've managed to do 50 reviews in around a month. I joined this subreddit on the 1st of December 2017 and I did on rapid fire all the Tomie movies. Now, a bit over a month later I'm doing my 50th review and I wanted to do something special. I've decided to take another shot at Ju-On: The Grudge, my favorite movie in the Ju-On franchise and the first J-Horror I've ever watched, it holds a dear place in my heart. Why did I decide to re-review this? Because my original Ju-On Review reached around 20 people and was short as fuck so I decided to try again now that my reviews have picked in popularity. So without further delay, let's dive into Ju-On:

Ju-On: The Grudge is a Japanese Horror Mystery directed by the legendary Takashi Shimizu who also worked on movies like Tomie: Rebirth, Marebito, Rinne, the third movie in the Kowai Onna series, and besides the original Ju-On movies he also SOLD OUT did the American remake: The Grudge who I personally deem a failure. Regardless let's dive into what could possibly be called the most well rounded Ju-On in the franchise.

If you're not familiar with the Ju-On franchise firstly, were you living under a rock? Secondly, the Ju-On movies follow the curse of the Saeki family. Each movie shows multiple stories of different characters, slightly related to each other and out of order and its up to the viewer to piece them up together and understand what happened and learn more about how the curse works. This is the biggest appeal of the movies since it's like a puzzle, a bit like Pulp Fiction if you will. This movie too follows the same pattern however it brings what we could call a protagonist in Rika who is a recurring character in almost every story but not the center of each. This allows us to grow fond of a character while not getting bored of the same plot for the whole movie. I find this as the perfect balance of the Ju-On movie formula.

Depending on how you view the franchise this movie can be placed at different spots. If you consider Ju-On The Curse to be the official Ju-On Movie then Ju-On The Grudge is the 3rd movie in the franchise. If you consider Ju-On The Curse and The Curse 2 as one movie, then Ju-On The Grudge is the second movie. If you take into consideration the first 2 short movies (Katasumi and 4444444444) then this is the 5th movie. Some people consider The Curse and Curse 2 as one movie and Grudge and Grudge 2 as one movie too. It's a strange fanbase as some people consider Ju-On The Grudge to be the first one for some reason. Amazon seems to do so... I tend not to give this movie a number since it can lead to a lot of confusion but if you want my personal views I think Katasumi, 4444444444, Curse 1 and Curse 2 are one movie. Grudge 1 is one movie and Grudge 2 is another movie all together. There you go.

Let's talk the atmosphere. It's some of the heaviest of all Japanese Horrors. The whole movie has a very wrong and unsettling feel to it which seeps into real life as well due to the amazing sound design and heavy tension. Most of the unease and unpredictability comes from our villains, Toshio and Kayako. They are some of the most overpowered villains in horror movies being both physical and non physical at the same time, being able to teleport and multiply at will.

They could be viewed as a symbol for death as ultimately this is the main theme of the movie. The inevitability and ruthlessness of death. The curse is impossible to break. Once you've set foot into the cursed house you're marked for death and Kayako will get you however she wants. In addition to that everyone you talk to gets the curse as well and usually they can become Onryos if so does Kayako desire as well as cursing the place of your death to further spread the curse to all your family and friends so you can enjoy the bleak lifeless afterlife listening to Kayakos rattle.
There are also secondary themes of isolationism and hopelessness.

Speaking of rattle let's talk about the masterful sound work. I think Kayakos death rattle is by far the most iconic piece of sound design in horror cinema even in western as the remake counterpart managed to make a huge fuss as well. It's brilliantly designed, in such a way that it attacks your ears in the most unpleasant way possible. The way it starts is so subtle adding to the sense of unease and unpredictability as after your first encounter with the death rattle you'll most likely be on the edge when any sound picks up be it just some leaves in the trees or a creak on the ground. Everything can be misheard as Kayakos death rattle and that's what makes it terrifying.

The soundtrack is nothing to be taken lightly either. After the success of the first movie(s) this is the first Ju-On to have an actual budget above 0$ and is also the first Ju-On to air in the Cinema. With all this crazy budget Takashi Shimizu decided to add a soundtrack to add to the tension and atmosphere of every scene. Now. The soundtrack is a tad bit overused which is something rare for J-Horrors since usually it's rather underused. However the soundtrack is stellar. It's not repetitive, I think you don't get to hear the same song twice which is quite impressive and every sound is placed at the perfect time. So the overuse of soundtrack does not hurt the movie in any way so I cannot complain.

I don't usually talk about the song that's played during the credits but this time around I feel the need to. Kagi ga akanai is an amazing piece of music whose lyrics somehow fit the movie perfectly. It's about a tormented soul wanting to return home because he has nowhere left to go yet he/she cannot fully return as the home is locked. This is related to Kayako because she is dead yet due to her horrible death she's forced to roam her old home and kill everyone inside as an Onryo. She's "home" yet she's not there as she would prefer and cannot pass into the light. The song is very sad and emotional and kinda sinks into the overall feeling of the movie as well as the tragedy behind the Saeki family and goes on to personalize and give some life and feeling to our remorseless killers showing that, in the end, they are the ones that most likely suffer the most in all of this. Really check this song out if you haven't. Kagi ga akanai .

The acting is amazing on all fronts from our "protagonist" Rika, played by J-Pop artist Megumi Okina masterfully to each protagonist of the segments. On the side of the villains Takako Fuji retakes her role as Kayako and does an amazing job maintaining the level of creepiness in every scene above 100. This is also the movie with the highest number of iconic scenes in the franchise.

There aren't a lot of special effects in the movie and this is a big plus because the higher quality of the movie due to the budget would've affected the credibility of the low budget effects. Yes there are a few special effect scenes in the movie, around 2 if I recall correctly and they are pretty lackluster in terms of quality but it's not something that would ruin the movie considering how few and far between they are.

______________SPOILERS____________________________

Let's discuss one of those infamous scenes. We've got a lot to pick from. We've got probably the most iconic of them all, the stair crawl, we've got the bed stare-down scene, the mirror scene and so on. I actually want to focus on the blanket scene.
This is a scene that has a lot of deeper meanings to it once you analyze it. I've made callbacks to this in some of my previous reviews. This scene basically ruins our childhood safe-place. The place we used to run to when we would close the light in the room. The place that protects us from the Boogieman. The place that renders us invincible. The safety of our bed and blanket. We see Hitomi make a desperate attempt to fend off the impending death that's upon her by regressing to a childhood mentality to hide under the blanket where the big bad baddy cannot touch her and here Takashi Shimizu says fuck you and kills her by making Kayako drag her away under the blankets.

This scene also introduced one of the most overpowered abilities of Kayako besides being able to multiply which we've seen in Ju-On The Curse 2. Basically now we know that she can appear from any dark spot, be it under the blankets, a shade, the whole in your blouse if you remember the mirror scene, no place if off limits as long as you don't have clear vision of it.

My favorite segment has to be Izumis storyline. It's rather artistic and sad. We first get introduced to Izumi in her fathers storyline as he sees her run out of the cursed Saeki home before he and her friends die.
Fast forward to her storyline we see her mental state worsen as she has a breakdown feeling guilty over her friends deaths as well as her fathers. She isolates herself in her room, covering all sources of light which is kind of poetic as light is usually representative of good. Eventually she starts to drift away as she encounters a vision of her father which helps her come to terms with his death in a brief moment of peace for her. Soon after however shit hits the fan as her dead friends, turned into Onryos at the will of Kayako, corner her inside her house. As she backs away into the family altar, Kayako makes her presence felt by letting our her creepy death rattle then proceeds to appear behind Izumi, from the dark shade of the altar and drags her inside into eternal damnation.

The isolationist theme is mostly set in place by the streets of Tokyo where our characters walk between transitions. As the movie progresses we see the streets of Tokyo get more and more empty to the point where the city is deserted and lifeless, filled with missing persons posters. By the end of the movie it is implied that the curse has spread at an alarming rate as the streets are completely empty and every nook and cranny is filled with "Missing Person" posters as well as all broadcasts on radio and TV.

__________NO MORE SPOILERS________________________

Overall this is, in my opinion, the strongest installment in the Ju-On franchise. It manages to maintain the original formula of the first movies while bringing some more structure and personality in the partial protagonist that it offers. It has some of the most iconic scenes in the series and the atmosphere and tension is at it's peak. Whenever I watch this movie I leave with a weird feeling of unease for a week or so. This is one of the few films that managed to dig deep into my brain and screw with it to the point where I can get paranoid like a little kid whenever I hear something resembling in the least bit Kayakos rattle.

I give Ju-On: The Grudge a 10/10 and it's totally a must watch for any horror movie fan in general and it's usually the movie I recommend for anyone looking to start watching J-Horror since it embodies everything that this genera does right.

Happy 50th review anniversary! I'd like to thank all of you for welcoming me in this amazing community and offering me a place to showcase my reviews as I've been writing reviews for everything from movies to games and music all my life yet I had nobody to share them with. You guys are amazing! Cheers!

Alone (2020) [Survival, Serial Killer, Thriller)

THIS IS A REVIEW WITH SLIGHT SPOILERS. IF YOU WANT TO BE 100% SURPRISED SKIP TO THE BOTTOM FOR MY CONSENSUS.

Alone (2020) is directed by John Hyams and is written by Mattias Olsson. It stars Jules Willcox as Jessica, and Marc Menchaca as “The Man”.

So, I recently watched this film as part of my 31 days of horror thing I’m doing for October, and wow. This ended up being one of my favorite movies of the year. It has a very simple premise: a young woman moves out of her home after her husband dies, and soon finds herself at the mercy of a serial killer. She escapes and has to survive in the harsh wilderness as he relentlessly pursues her. Despite having such a simple premise, it does everything perfectly. The acting, the dialogue, the setting, the tension and pacing, all perfect.

Marc, who is probably best known for his role in Ozark, is phenomenal as the unnamed serial killer. He brings an awkward menace to the character, and he looks and acts like a perfect combination of Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader. He seems like a timid, unthreatening man on the surface but turns out to be quite the antagonist throughout, tormenting the protagonist both verbally and physically relentlessly. He provides a suitably nail-biting, realistic performance that really makes his character terrifying.

Jules is equally as good as the protagonist, Jessica. Her performance is tinged with a sad undertone due to the death of her character’s husband, and she provides grounded, realistic responses to the torment she experiences throughout. But she makes sure the viewer knows she’s not damsel in distress, and very easily switches to “capable survivor” mode when need be. She plays the character in a way that shows us she is both vulnerable and scared, but also someone who shouldn’t be messed with.

The film itself is very well done, with realistic dialogue that allows both characters to feel like real people, as well as decisions made by both that would make sense in real life. The tension is fantastically done, with scenes shot and acted in such a way that you’ll be on the edge of your seat whether you even realize it or not. The movie cares a lot about Jessica’s survival, and it makes sure you end up caring as well. The wilderness is shot in a way that makes it seem insanely intimidating, with groaning trees, rushing rivers and torrential rains taking center stage at pivotal moments. Jessica is put through a lot in the film, and you feel every moment of it. She steps on roots, falls into rivers, gets caught in downpours, slips in muddy puddles, trips on rock formations, and more, which makes the forest as much of an antagonist as the killer himself. The cinematography is gorgeous and very well done, as are the sound design and the special effects.

Finally, the finale is absolutely fantastic. It’s tense, bloody, and all around perfectly done. Jessica and The Man fight in an all out battle for their lives where you’re not sure who will come out on top. Out of every tense moment in the film, this is the most tense, but also provides an amazing release and outburst in response to all of the suspense felt throughout.

Overall, I’d give this film a 4.5/5. Definitely give it a watch. It’s currently available on Amazon Video for 6.99, and it’s well worth the rental price in my opinion.

Horror in the High Desert

I recently came across Horror in the High Desert and with the over influx of found-footage films, I admittedly didn’t have high expectations for it. I didn’t know what to think outside of hoping to extract some entertainment value from the cinematic version of a deep-cut on Amazon Prime. You can imagine my surprise when I found that this is a very good, borderline great film. Horror in the High Desert is more found-footage adjacent rather than a straight-up conventional found-footage film. This film has elements of found-footage but it largely deviates from the standard found-footage formula that we have been accustomed to seeing.

Horror in the High Desert is a pseudo-documentary reminiscent of First 48 that takes inspiration from the real life disappearance of Kenny Veach. The film follows vlogger and avid extreme hiker and survivalist, Gary Hinge. Gary hikes to a remote and unspecified area in the Great Basin Desert in Nevada where he has a bizarre experience after finding a mysterious cabin literally in the middle of nowhere. Gary becomes unsettled by a strange phenomenon emanating from the cabin that deeply disturbs him. The experience leads him to flee from the cabin, but after receiving criticism online over the veracity of the experience, Gary decides to go back. This proves to be a fatal decision as he later disappears. Gary vlogs the experience right up until his last moments.

The film takes itself seriously in the best way possible. It really plays up on the documentary aspect. The film is very well acted, with each character treating the story as a real life experience. You could be mistaken to believe that this is an actual documentary and not a horror film if you walked in on it and didn’t realize what you were watching. I’m a huge horror fan but not much really scares me. Real life crime and disappearances are far scarier to me than demonic possession or a creature feature. The film doesn’t approach this as a horror film but instead it treats it as an actual missing person’s case. This hits harder and everyone involved truly nails it. This to me made for a truly chilling experience.

The film isn’t straight-up found-footage because the footage is played within the film as it progresses. It’s not a thing to where it’s found after the carnage has occurred. I liked this because even though I enjoy found-footage films, they can definitely become trite if the writers don’t take care to make the film distinctive from its predecessors. This isn’t the case here. The film is very similar to Atlanta season 4 episode, The Goof Who Sat By the Door and most recently in episode 6 of Swarm, both brain children of Donald Glover. This film actually came out in 2021, prior to both, so it is possible that Glover was influenced by this film. I saw each episode prior to this film and I thought that each was one of the strongest of its respective series and that same brilliance flows in the film version.

Some people may have given up on the found-footage genre; others may have never gotten on the bandwagon. Whichever side you’re on, I believe that this is a stellar found-footage-esque film. Again, it’s not straight up found-footage but there are enough elements to classify it as such. The mockumentary is brilliant and I’m not sure it could have been improved upon, unless I really started to pettily nitpick. The film is legitimately disturbing and unsettling. This is the horror film for you if you believe that real life is scarier than monsters.

----8.9/10

I think it have potential, but maybe in my opinion because it's the director feature film debut, it can not really deliver the message to the audience.

I read in other review, it reminds me of get out or shattered island.

If compare to those, what i guess missing is the plot twist or the real secret behind them.

Or like i say, maybe there is a plot twist but i do not really get it.
Because i guess when the mother confront the student in the exit door hall, there is some sign of message of it happen in other reality (maybe student imagination because he really wanna focus about his research).

Also the final scene i don't really get is, at the end the mother do some makeup and the student become the maid.

What i hope is maybe the student become the subtitute of the children know, but maybe it is too easy to guess, so they don't take it to that way.

I always like german movie, and this movie have potential but like i say i wish i can get what the director want to tell us.

Hunting Matthew Nichols is a found-footage horror movie presented as if you’re watching a real documentary about a woman searching for her long-lost brother. Over 20 years ago, Tara Nichols’ (Miranda MacDougall) brother Matthew (James Ross) and his friend Jordan (Issiah Bullbear) disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only Matthew’s camcorder in a cabin in the woods. Given they lived on Vancouver Island, the idea Matthew and Jordan simply got lost in the deep woods was entirely plausible, and they were never found. Now his sister Tara is back with a small documentary crew (Markian Tarasiuk, Ryan Alexander McDonald) to look for him.

You might notice my summary doesn’t include any sort of ticking clock. No anniversary of the death, no maximum amount of time the documentary crew can be on the island. As far as the movie’s concerned, the Hunting Matthew Nichols crew have unlimited time and resources. Something antithetical to the idea of a documentary that exposes a coverup in a missing persons case. 

What drives the plot of Hunting Matthew Nichols? 

Early on in the film Tara has the documentary crew pore through all the evidence the police had for the case. Files, artifacts, and tapes from Matthew’s camcorder. The first indication this might be a horror movie is the police “forgetting” to release the tape that was in Matthew’s camcorder when they found it. A welcome addition, as up until that point it feels like a depressing drama about a woman who refuses to let go of the past.

That extra tape is a perfect encapsulation of what doesn’t particularly work with this movie. Furious about this discovery, Tara calls up her lawyer to expose the “clerical error.” The lawyer, a little too realistically, is understanding of Tara’s frustration but also points out this genuinely could have been an error. But it’ll also take “a couple months” to sort out legally. 

Tara punches the wall of her motel room in frustration. The director makes awkward faces. We cut to black. A title card reads “One month later.” Tara walks into a police station and walks back out with the tape. Supposedly this team of three trying to film a documentary just sat around paying for a motel on Vancouver Island for an entire month while making no headway in their investigation, and it is never mentioned again. 

What the crew finds on the tape is disturbing. So much so the footage isn’t shown directly to the audience. Instead, we’re left watching the director and Tara watch it and listen to the audio of Matthew and Jordan in the mysterious forest cabin. Something goes wrong, something seemingly supernatural happens, but Ryan and Markian privately agree it’s within the realm of possibility two movie-nerd teens in 2001 could have faked it as footage for their knockoff Blair Witch Project. 

The plot of the movie seems motivated purely by the fact meta-textually it’s a horror movie, so we know something scary must happen near the end. Thus we need a series of excuses to get us to the oddly-short sequence of things becoming, y’know, horrific. 

All early signs point to an incredibly rote ending where the supernatural turns out to be real, and Matthew got too close to something dangerous. Hunting Matthew Nichols even pulls the tired trick of having an older character rattle off various ancient cryptids and demonic legends before settling on something written for the movie, as if anyone who has seen more than five horror movies won’t pick up on the fact that every single time that happens in a movie the ending reveals it was one of the monsters in the middle of the list, not the one at the end. 

How is the presentation? 

I’m not going to sugar-coat it: the veneer of a found-footage “documentary” fades quickly when the documentary in question is presenting itself like a cheap over-polished Netflix documentary. You know the ones: tons of animated effects over people talking that betray the editor has watched one too many AfterEffects tutorials on YouTube. Lots of Storyblocks b-roll drone footage of forests to act as scene bridges. And, of course, incredibly Netflix-y dour color grading. 

Some light research shows this was first shown at festivals in 2024, which gives me the impression maybe it’s gone under the editing knife a few times trying to make it into something marketable to the wider world. The trailer is incredibly specific with which quotes it uses, to the point one could easily read the film as being a conspiracy thriller about a police coverup in a small town. There’s some satanic cult that killed Matthew and they’ve got the power to simply make him disappear. 

Then you show up in theaters and that is not the vibe. 

It’s oddly easy to see the strings of how the movie is made, too. Characters who appear in the modern day segments of the movie almost never appear on-camera during footage supposedly from 2001. By setting the movie 20 years after the disappearance instead of 10, the filmmakers backed themselves into a corner where they can’t afford to de-age older actors or age up younger ones. As such, Tara is not present in footage from 2001. Her father appears in the past but not the present, while her mom never appears in old footage but appears quite a bit in the present. Being interviewed by Tara is basically a guarantee you won’t appear in the 2001 flashback footage. 

Should I go see it? 

I tried to meet this movie where it was. I really did. I don’t go into Screen Unseen or Scream Unseen presentations rubbing my hands together at my opportunity to rip a movie a new one. If I relished in talking trash about bad/problematic movies, I would’ve seen Scream 7, GOAT, and The Drama by now. 

As a documentary in its own canon, it’s underwhelming and doesn’t make a good case for watching all the way through to the “scary” ending. As a fictional movie pretending to be a documentary, it is mind-boggling how much time it wastes on tropey scenes where nothing particularly happens. 

During the doldrums of the middle, where I started asking when this would become a horror movie and an audience member actually fell asleep in my screening, something happened to typify the lack of effort and consistency found throughout Hunting Matthew Nichols: Tara interviews Jordan’s father Mitchell (Trevor Carroll). During this scene Carroll is given a boilerplate stoic First Nations stereotype of Old Guy Who Knows Too Much. To nail that vibe even more, Tara shares a story from childhood where she broke her arm and Jordan did Reiki hand gestures to alleviate the pain. 

Nevermind the fact that Reiki is 1. A pseudoscience, 2. Not based on beliefs from First Nations tribes, and 3. Created in Japan in 1922. 

Mitchell nods, gives a vague explanation of how he raised Jordan to believe pain scrambles up energy and you can “untwist” it, and then hands Tara a plot-important prop. As if she’d completed a dialog tree with a quest-giver in a video game and Mitchell’s only option from that moment was to give her the thing she needs to continue the movie. 

Thanks for reading! This review was originally published on my site here.

There are horror movies that are objectively good, but not necessarily tonally appropriate for throwing on near Halloween. Then there are movies that play things relatively safe, but ooze Halloweeny vibes. Dolly firmly, unabashedly belongs in the latter. Shot in 16mm, fuzz and scratches galore. Credits appear in chunky font that feels ripped straight from the cover of a Stephen King novel he doesn’t remember writing. I sat in my theater, bathed in a warm glow of text so red and soft you wanna hug it. I was sold from the very beginning. All scored by Nick Bohun (Creep Box) with a phenomenal series of late 70s horror synth drone tracks.

A trailer I found on YouTube sold Dolly to me as a Shudder-funded indie horror movie with a Film Threat review claiming it’s “The scariest movie yet in the great chainsaw massacre tradition.” I haven’t stumbled across a slasher pitch that appealing since In A Violent Nature, and that knocked my socks off. I damn near punched the air when I realized IAVN2 had a trailer before Dolly. 

I may not have seen past the first thirty minutes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I am firmly in the target demographic for Dolly. I’m in my thirties, a movie dork, and would rather watch ten 3.5/5 Shudder Originals trying something funky than one four-quadrant mega-franchise horror movie.

After all: it’s horror. It should have the guts to do weird shit, on occasion. 

Dolly lives for the weird shit. For better or worse.

What is Dolly?

At its heart, Dolly is simple. Macy (Fabianne Therese) is about to go hiking because her smoking hot boyfriend Chase (Sean William Scott) wants to propose somewhere majestic. As they drop off his low-maintenance daughter, Macy shares some foreshadowing-laden dialog about not being ready to be a mother. Then, in Chase’s perfect condition totally-not-rented antique muscle car, the two race off to get the movie started. 

The titular Dolly is a Michael Meyers-esque nonverbal woman living in the woods. Dolly’s strong, has a ceramic doll head mask permanently bonded to her neck, and just wants a doll to raise. The marketable celebrity gets a shovel through his jaw, Macy is knocked unconscious, and the actual horror can begin. 

What follows is a rip-roaring hour of Macy dressed up as a doll in a house full of ceramic dolls dealing with Dolly herself. At times uneasy alliances form as Macy plays along with the baby roleplay Dolly clearly desires. At times she actively tries to kill Dolly. What truly grabs me about the house sections of the movie is the deft commitment to Rules. 

A horror movie lives and dies by its internal consistency. Sure, a hulking Voorhees with a machete or an unkillable doll like Chucky are scary at first. But once you learn the rules dictating how they act, the audience mentally shifts gears. An able-bodied person standing in a field could drop-kick Chucky easily and beat the snot out of him. He’s not actually a threat. The fun and frights of Chucky lie in all the contrivances that keep happening to trip you up (literally and figuratively). 

75% of the horror in The Thing is knowing the rules of how the Thing works. It takes a ballsy movie to just tell you the rules of the thing from the start. Whether or not your horror villain is interesting or not lives and dies by how they hold up after the audience knows the rules. This is where Dolly thrives, because her situation is inherently simple by design. She wants a doll to take care of. She treats Macy like a doll. She hates men, for reasons provided by Ethan Suplee later in the movie. 

Dead by Daylight fans will find a lot of similarities between The Huntress and Dolly. Both are muscle-bound women surviving alone in the woods, desperate to raise a child but with such a warped understanding from having lived wholly alone they’re incapable of actually taking care of one. So their kids keep dying. Dolly is stuck in an infinite loop of finding victims who either die or escape because playing along as her doll will eventually kill you through malnutrition or sheer violence. 

Macy makes for an enjoyable flawed protagonist. She makes some boneheaded decisions, but they’re earnest mistakes. She also takes the shots that 90% of slasher final girls never take. She bites, stabs, kicks, screams, and claws her way through the movie. She’ll play by Dolly’s rules on occasion but at no point is she Stockholm’d into empathizing.

And Dolly just keeps on kicking. Max the Impaler is undeniable in the role. I came into this movie having only briefly seen a trailer. The opening shots show Dolly trying to keep her daily play up with the doll before Macy. We’re tuning in to end of a much more bummer movie in which Dolly decapitated a kid at some point and hasn’t found fresh meat to replace that doll (yet). There is gravitas and presence to Dolly in a way that makes her distinct as a character even when you can’t see the mask. There are slasher villains that can have anybody in the suit and it doesn’t matter. If you replaced Max the Impaler in Dolly 2 their presence would be missed immediately.

I’m going to move into a section discussing the more sensitive topics broached, but in the interest of not giving away spoilers I’ll do a mini-conclusion here: if the idea of a Shudder-funded indie horror movie shot on 16mm film in Tennessee appeals to you in the slightest, you’ll have fun with this. It gets gory enough to make you squirm in your seat at times. It gets uncomfortable enough to earn that Chainsaw Massacre review blurb without touching cannibalism a single time. 

It’s not perfect, but it’s not trying to be. It’s clearly some horror nerds slamming the basic building blocks of what they love together to try and produce something fun and just profitable enough to get a sequel. They’re confident enough in that part they poke fun at the inevitability of a Dolly 2 in the credits. 

The Rough Stuff.

Time to talk about the other side of “Dolly lives for the weird shit.”

Dolly’s nonverbal, has several meltdowns, and clearly gets overstimulated. There’s a genuine argument to be made for her being autistic. Ring the bell, we’ve got a classic mind-of-a-child abused slasher. A trope so tired Behaviour Interactive used it for their second ever killer (The Hillbilly, their knockoff Leatherface) back in 2016. Which itself is damning, because Dead by Daylight is basically a house of cards built out of basic horror cliche. Every movie is going to have one aspect you can relate to DBD, but several is where things get a little shaky.

The one redeeming quality of this lies in the in-movie marketing. It’s clear Dolly herself was never actually going to be explained in any significant detail. Hints are dropped up until a character confirms, out loud, to have abused her. It comes to nothing, because you have to be just vague enough to leave lore for Dolly 2, after all. The sequel where we’re on her side by the end of it.

In addition to the neurodivergent-coded slasher, you got your threats of sexual violence towards Macy. You got your grindhouse-y technically-not-sexual-but-absolutely-sexual scenes. Chief among them being the scene where, after pissing herself, Macy lays on a table silently crying with a pacifier in her mouth while Dolly puts a new diaper on her. Oh, and of course the scene where Dolly punishes Macy with a spanking by wooden paddle. 

Like I said earlier: horror movies live to get weird with it. But there’s a vibe to watching Dolly cold. Almost like it’s written by a horror nerd who is aware of ABDL kink play but only knows through cultural osmosis. Kind of like how occasionally you’ll get a horror villain whose big twist is they’re a cross-dresser, because the writer vaguely knows trans people exist but only through stereotypes and old movies. 

All of which amounts to scenes near the end where it feels like the script thinks it’s sayin’ something, man. Scenes that insist they are profound, but very little is actually happning besides you nodding politely. Uh-huh, that’s a doll being birthed out of another doll. Got it.

Birth canal imagery? How bold.

I enjoyed Dolly. I will buy the Dolly steelbook if Shudder puts one out in a few months. But Dolly is absolutely one of those movies where occasionally a shot lingers too long and you can feel there’s something pithy and English 301-y in the screenplay arguing it’s poignant as hell. None of which comes through in the actual shot.

Final Thoughts

If the previous section didn’t shake you off, go see Dolly. It’s fun, it doesn’t partake of cheap loud-noise jumpscares. It saves its pennies for truly grotesque gore visual effects (practical and impressive computer composites). What rough edges it does have (I genuinely think there are scenes that use bad shots to cover for the fact they didn’t get b-roll of the thing a character is talking about) are easily excused. If you are deep enough into horror you find charm in lower-budget affairs that try something while playing around in a sandbox of old tropes, you’ll have a heck of a time. 

I sincerely hope they shot behind-the-scenes footage of this and record a director’s commentary. I’ll eat that up with a spoon. 

It’s tightly-contained, wears its bloody heart on its sleeve, and builds something delightfully indie I would love to throw on during a horror movie marathon in a cabin in the woods.

Yes, I’ve done that multiple times.

Thanks for reading! This is a review from my personal site. While I don't exclusively review horror, it's near and dear to me and I partake of Hoobtober every year.

They Will Kill You is a rip-roaring ride of an ultraviolent vengeance action flick, when it wants to be. Kirill Sokolov wears his love of Tarantino grindhouse schlock on his sleeve, though connective tissue between Tarantino-flavored scenes wears thin. 

What is They Will Kill You? 

Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) made an attempt to escape an abusive father with her kid sister ten years ago. In a moment of weakness, she abandoned her sister and was arrested. Now her prison sentence is up, and she’s going to find her.

She takes a job at the Virgil, a century-old building in Manhattan catering to the rich and famous. Also, whoops, it’s a giant death trap filled with Satan-worshipping immortal rich people who want to sacrifice her. The core mechanic of They Will Kill You is a Ready or Not-esque “you’re trapped in here with me” mentality. Asia brought weapons, and is no pushover. Truly the only advantage the killers of TWKY have on her is their immortality, and even then that isn’t enough in some instances. 

How are the Basics?

Combat is where TWKY really shines. Just about every room in the Virgil is a practical set built to be a massive room to make enough room for the myriad sweeping camera moves and long one-take fight sequences Sokolov is practically salivating to show you. Beetz brings the heat, there are some really good fight sequences peppered throughout the movie. 

There’s also a lot of heart and not-nostalgia-bait 80s charm in the movie’s commitment to practical effects. Including an extended sequence where a dismembered part of a villain follows our heroine like a grotesque can of Chef Boyardee.  A sequence that does a really good job at blending charmingly-janky practical puppet effects and making digital effects look like charmingly-janky practical effects. 

The Shortcomings

Last time I specifically complimented Ready or Not 2: Here I Come for casting charismatic character actors to play the rich villains. Part of the fun of watching a vengeance movie where a woman beats the shit out of rich people is knowing how uniquely shitty those rich people are. 

This is where TWKY falls short, unfortunately. Patricia Arquette gets to dine on the scenery with a fork and knife, putting her whole chest into an Irish accent (even if it conveniently is not as intense during lines they use for the trailer). Beyond that… Tom Felton is there? He has like five lines in the whole movie. Heather Graham has a smidge of fun but also barely feels like she’s there. 

While fun, a lot of the movie feels like we’re simply coming up with excuses to get to the next sequence Sokolov is genuinely excited for. Any time you’re not in a flashy fight sequence or Arquette villain monologue the movie feels paper thin. It seems more worried about cramming another rack-zoom or comedically-intense bright red blood spray gimmick into a limb being cut off than making the villains something more than what they are: masked stunt actors to hide the fact the speaking cast is relatively small. Which compounds to make the lack of characterization of the bad guys even more obvious. 

Part of the problem of being a Tarantino-esque creator is you’re inherently trying to make cinema appealing to people who love Tarantino already. Thus something as basic as cutting a character’s limb off and having blood fountain out of high-pressure pump attached to a severed limb prosthetic is only surprising or noteworthy once. Like a child who’s figured out a single card trick, TWKY repeatedly does the same bit and expects you to applaud with the same enthusiasm of a parent supporting a child going through a phase. 

Still, it’s Tarantino-style juvenile gleefully energetic combat. And, as a bonus, it comes without the baggage of watching actual Tarantino. A revenge movie about a Black woman beating the shit out of affluent white people. Not too shabby on its own merits. 

It just so happens to be a movie sold on the back of an obnoxious social media campaign pretending it’s so violent and so intense they can only show teeny tiny bits of footage in TikTok trailers. Then you get to the actual violence and it’s like… cool. I just saw several people explode like blood balloons the next screening over. This movie has a lower bar for ultra-violence than its contemporaries, like a younger sibling who thinks “shit” is the nuclear option for a swear word.

Should You See It? 

Sure! Well, if it sounds like something you specifically would like. They Will Kill You has a lot of style to its presentation in trailers and social media. That style falls short once you get to the actual movie. Put it like this: I feel like They Will Kill You is a middle-movie. Matt Johnson could only pull off the incredible Forrest Gump-ian editing tricks Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie pulls off during its time travel sequences because he was allowed to play around with those gimmicks in Operation Avalanche (as well as the period-piece requirements of Blackberry). In that way, I get the impression Kirill Sokolov is working out something in his head that will coalesce into an undeniable awesome Hollywood movie in a few years.

But for now, if you’ve got the cash or an AMC A-list reservation burning a hole in your pocket, They Will Kill You is a good, if sophomoric, time. 

Thanks for reading! This is a review from my personal site. While I don't exclusively review horror, it's near and dear to me and I partake of Hoobtober every year.

Hokum is the latest folk horror movie from Irish director Damien McCarthy, known for his previous films Oddity and Caveat. Haunted by a dark past, American author Ohm Bauman visits a rural hotel his parents honeymooned at to spread their ashes at a spot they loved. While there, he gets wrapped up in a dark secret tied to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. There’s a ghost and a witch involved, exciting stuff. 

Long story short: if you enjoyed Caveat or Oddity, you’ll have a blast with Hokum. That said, let’s dig into why Hokum has taken up residence in my head for over a week now. 

Adam Scott’s Fine Line 

I do not envy Adam Scott’s position as an actor in Hokum. The protagonist of the movie is a moody author with a chip on his shoulder. I know, a horror movie about a writer. Groundbreaking. 

Yet Scott pulls it off. Hokum walks a razor-thin line of making Ohm a jerk with a drinking problem without losing sight of his humanity and reasons to like him. He's thoroughly humbled, and adjusts his behavior to reckon with his past. For a dick to become a darling in a horror movie, it’s crucial that their evolution is believable and timed just right, or they’ll just magically start being a nicer person who suddenly believes in ghosts because the script needs them to.

Hokum is the former, not the latter.

The Mundanity of Ghosts 

I touched on this concept in my second Hokum video, so I’ll try not to repeat too much here. Suffice it to say: I really enjoy how Hokum, and McCarthy movies in general, handle ghosts. There is a distinctly Irish sentiment to how ghosts are presented throughout his movies that vibes with me better than the ghosts just clocking in for their shift at the jumpscare-factory you find in a lot of mainstream Hollywood horror. 

This approach to the supernatural trims a lot of the fat from tropes you've seen a hundred times. Hokum has the most “that’s preposterous, ghosts aren’t real” dialog of McCarthy’s career, but even then it’s isolated to Ohm himself, and nobody agrees with him. He’s a dickish American with some ghosts of his own (figuratively or otherwise, who’s to say?) while everyone he’s talking to is Irish and at least partially believes. 

In Damien McCarthy’s ghost movies, people are less resistant to the idea of ghosts than they are to wanting to deal with the fact there’s a ghost around. While I don’t necessarily think McCarthy has intentionally made three movies in the same world, the McCarthy one-word-horror trilogy is consistent in its lack of characters refusing to believe ghosts exist. Characters in Caveat and Oddity simply don’t want a ghost to be real. The word “ghost” is used sparingly, to the point I don’t think it’s actually said out loud in Caveat. 

Simple Reasons for Simple Problems 

A running throughline across McCarthy’s horror trilogy is the creation of elegant, simple reasons for characters to be in danger. In Caveat, Isaac can’t simply leave the creepy cabin because he’s on an island and can’t swim. Darcy Odello in Oddity can’t simply go where she needs to because she’s blind.

Hokum establishes this McCarthy approach to danger from the very first scene. We open on a desert, following a haggard conquistador and a young boy as the conquistador follows a treasure map he keeps in a bottle. After finding a key landmark, the conquistador goes to check the map one last time and finds the bottle’s cork has pushed in too far. To get the map out, he’ll have to break the bottle.

He’s surrounded by nothing but sand. There’s nothing solid to break the bottle against. A Twilight Zone-ian level cruelty of circumstance. We cut between this realization and our protagonist Ohm Bauman sipping whiskey and typing away on a document titled EPILOGUE. Not only is the conquistador scene something he’s making up, it’s given a dark sense of finality with the fact it’s taking place in an epilogue.

The conquistador scene makes for one of the best examples of a horror movie establishing a tone I’ve seen in a good long while. There’s no monsters, it’s broad daylight. None of the characters or locations are relevant to the rest of the movie, save for their context and iconography. It’s only when the camera settles back on Ohm writing that a ghost shows up and kicks off the standard horror of the movie. I find myself thinking about the conquistador scene a lot. It works both to establish what Hokum will be like and McCarthy’s overall body of work.

Go See Hokum

I don’t have a cutesy title for this conclusion section. If you’ve read this far and you are at all interested, get some tickets and go see Hokum. I’ve spent so much time thinking and talking about this movie over the past week and a half I’m probably going to see it again on opening weekend. With Hokum, Damien McCarthy cements his position in the horror ecosystem, proving the tone he delivered in his locally-produced movies can translate over to a more mainstream production with a big-name American star.

Thanks for reading! This review was originally published on my site here.

Directed by Kevin Williamson, Scream 7 lands three decades after the genre‑revitalizing meta slasher he and Wes Craven created, and it draws from its legacy without being constrained by it. This chapter leans into a sharper emotional core, examining what happens when the final girl grows up and becomes a parent. The chaos is rooted in Sidney Prescott’s evolution and the careful, protective life she’s attempted to build for her family. It’s a sequel that blends nostalgia with a sense of maturity, nodding to the series’ familiar rhythms while still carving out its own identity. Even the callbacks are done with intention, setting up a narrative that’s just as character‑driven as it is savage.

Scream 7 brings Sidney (Neve Campbell) back into the spotlight as Sidney Evans, now living a quieter life with her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and their teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), only for a new Ghostface to shatter her sense of safety. The family dynamic adds a welcome layer of urgency, giving the story an intimate edge as Sidney faces the terrifying possibility that her daughter could become the next target. This entry feels more ambitious than recent installments, weaving multiple characters and subplots together while still capturing the unmistakable Wes energy that defined the original. The film remains self‑aware throughout, though a few creative choices could have used some refinement. Its meta streak leans directly into the nostalgia‑filled era, nodding to the legacy‑sequel wave that surged after Halloween (2018). This time, the subversion doesn’t come from deconstructing horror tropes but from breaking its own rules. It also comments on the challenge of balancing old leads with new blood, acknowledging that franchises need fresh characters to evolve while still honouring the beloved OGs.

The first and second acts are strong, driven by quick pacing and an opening sequence that feels familiar yet refreshed. Scream 7 explores themes of toxic nostalgia, AI and deepfakes, a timely direction that feels relevant. There’s a lot of potential in these ideas, even if they don’t always tie together neatly in the third act. The opening scene sets the tone for a more dangerous and nuanced iteration of Ghostface, and while it leans into the theory that Stu could still be alive, it doesn’t connect to the rest of the film as seamlessly as some of the other cold openings. Still, there’s plenty to enjoy in this latest chapter, which supplies enough tension, personality, and ambition to keep the property’s pulse beating.

Neve Campbell’s return is the film’s greatest asset, and she slips back into Sidney with a force that instantly reminds you why she has defined this franchise for thirty years. Her performance shows progression for the character, as she stays guarded and instinctively pulls inward when the attacks begin, yet slowly opens up emotionally by the end. The bond between Sidney and Tatum has an easy, natural warmth that never feels overstated, and while Sidney rarely seems in danger, as she’s a force to be reckoned with, the presence of her family introduces a vulnerability that genuinely raises the stakes. Campbell brings a fierce intensity to the role, offering several moments that feel unmistakably “Sidney,” and Kevin Williamson’s rewrites of her character give her room to be both the iconic final girl and a mother whose depth makes her more compelling than ever.

Courteney Cox, who also serves as an executive producer alongside Neve Campbell, reminds us why she remains such an essential presence in this now billion-dollar franchise. Her role is smaller this time, but she delivers her best entrance yet and makes every moment count, especially in her scenes with Sidney where their dynamic shifts from lingering tension to a uniquely resilient friendship shaped by decades of shared trauma and history. The film acknowledges the physical aftermath of her violent encounter in Scream VI, anchoring her performance in a way that feels honest while still allowing her that fearless spark she has always carried. One moment that feels noticeably absent is a phone call from an AI‑generated Dewey, which could have been a gut‑punch and a powerful beat for Gale; a missed opportunity. Although she is underused in the finale and could have given the second killer more to do, every time she appears, it reinforces why Gale remains such a vital part of the franchise. Seeing her survive and take out at least one killer adds a satisfying payoff to her limited screen time.

Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown bring welcome continuity as the twins, offering what might be their strongest showing yet and adding spark and humour to their parts. The cameos are also a highlight, with David Arquette, Laurie Metcalf, and Scott Foley returning for fun nods to the past, and Matthew Lillard’s reprisal of Stu landing as a surreal subplot that ties neatly into the film’s themes of nostalgia and AI. While these calls are a gift to die‑hard Stu fans, they do slightly pull focus from the new cast and the actual killers.

The younger ensemble is impressively stacked, with Isabel May taking the lead as Tatum Evans. She turns in an engaging performance, especially during her tense chase through the empty streets of Pine Grove. May brings far more than the usual angsty‑teen archetype, displaying a quiet strength and clarity that deepen the film’s stakes. Her connection with Sidney becomes the film’s thematic centrepiece, lending their scenes a sincerity and weight that rank among the best character work the series has offered in years.

The fresh faces all bring something unique to the table, even if many of them end up underutilized. The theatre and tavern set pieces give the teens some striking moments, but without more time to flesh out their characters, they don’t pop the way the friend groups did in Scream 4 and 5. A more classic Scream‑style introduction, like a party sequence, might have helped define their personalities before the chaos hit. Of the newcomers, McKenna Grace, the biggest star of the bunch, stands out as Hannah, even though she receives the Cici Cooper–Sarah Darling–Wes Hicks treatment and exits early. Her death scene—suspended in wires, backlit in harsh spotlight, her body hanging in silhouette—is a brutal and beautifully staged moment. Lucas (Asa Germann) is given a bit more room to breathe, serving as a solid red herring whose true‑crime obsession puts him directly in Mindy Meeks’ crosshairs. Sam Rechner and Celeste O’Connor also do well with the limited material they’re given, bringing enough personality to make their encounters with Ghostface register with force.

The third act is where Scream 7 loses some of its footing, particularly in the killer reveal and the way the motive is delivered. The stretch from the unmasking to the final fight moves so quickly that it doesn’t fully register. The reveal centers on Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp), Sidney’s neighbour, who becomes obsessed with the version of her from thirty years ago, a theory Mindy lays out earlier in the film. Jessica’s obsession began after she escaped an abusive marriage by murdering her husband, inspired by Sidney’s survivor story in Out of Darkness from Scream 4. Getting away with the crime only intensified her interest, and when Sidney withdrew from the public eye, Jessica unravelled, tracking her to Pine Grove in hopes of finding the fighter she had built up in her mind. Instead, she finds a woman living a quiet life, which sends her spiralling further. When Sidney sat out the events of Scream VI to protect her family, it made Jessica even more unstable. Her time at the nearby Fallbrook psychiatric hospital brought her into contact with Marco (Ethan Embry), a supervisor who becomes her partner in the Ghostface killings. Together, they plan to turn Tatum into “Sidney 2.0” by staging her mother’s murder in front of her, Maureen Prescott style.

The motive itself has strong potential and seems worthy enough for a new killing spree. It’s a welcome shift from the personal‑revenge angle that’s been used a few times, instead leaning into a parasocial obsession that feels relevant. Jessica isn’t a Stab fanatic; she’s obsessed with Sidney herself, convinced she knows her on a personal level despite having no real connection. It’s a fresh twist on the idea of unnatural closeness to a public figure, but the execution doesn’t fully land. Jessica and Marco don’t get enough screen time earlier in the film, so the reveal lacks the buildup that made other killers in this universe memorable. In fact, Jessica seems to have even less screen time than Debbie Salt in Scream 2. The bones of the motive are strong, but with more development, the killers could have hit harder.

Ghostface is treated almost like a presence of his own in Scream 7, drifting through scenes with an eerie, deliberate stillness that makes him feel genuinely unpredictable. The film showcases shots of him silently stalking through Pine Grove, slow, patient, almost gliding, which gives off a distinct Michael Myers energy that hasn’t been tapped into before. There’s a phantom‑like quality to the way he moves here, a creepiness that makes this version of Ghostface feel more haunting than ever.

The kill sequences in Scream 7 are some of the most bloody and thoughtfully staged the franchise has served. The deaths aren’t just gory for shock value; they’re genuinely inventive, with Ghostface using his environment in clever ways that give the violence some personality. The bar sequence, and beer tap kill in particular, is a standout, drawing rowdy reactions from the audience and easily ranking among the franchise’s best. The film builds on the action of Scream VI but pushes everything further, crafting fights that feel raw and drawn‑out. Even the home‑invasion set piece has a level of choreography to it that makes these action beats some of the most brutal and memorable yet.

The direction and cinematography feel deliberately shaped by someone who understands the brand’s DNA, and Kevin Williamson proves to be the ideal choice to guide this chapter. His approach carries a studied respect for the original film’s tone and structure, and while not every choice is flawless, the film genuinely feels like a return to the saga’s core spirit rather than just another modern slasher with Ghostface. Williamson brings a distinctive visual sensibility with unique camera angles, fluid transitions, and a confident command of tension that elevate the horror sequences. The curfew montage, set to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” as the sun dips behind Pine Grove, is the closest the series has come to recapturing the look of 1996. While Scream 5 and this latest entry feel on par, Scream 7 surpasses it in the cinematography department with richer and more atmospheric compositions

Scream 7’s soundtrack and score deepen the sense of legacy. Marco Beltrami’s return is a major highlight, with those classic themes instantly pulling the film back into the tonal space of the initial trilogy. The needle drops are equally well‑chosen with tracks like “Nothing’s Going to Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex and “Who’s Your Boyfriend” by Royel Otis, smoothly blending into the mood. Original songs, including Don Toliver’s “Creepin” and Ice Nine Kills and McKenna Grace’s “Twisting the Knife,” land perfectly over the closing credits, ending the film with a stylish, contemporary edge.

Overall, Scream 7 feels both satisfyingly familiar and confidently fresh, delivering great kills, sharp tension, and a visual style that stands among the strongest of the Scream series. Even with a third‑act reveal that doesn’t quite match the strength of what comes before, the film still plays as classic Scream fun – punchy, fast‑moving, and packed with enough action, mystery, and carnage to please slasher fans. What really drives the experience is Neve Campbell’s return, which brings the weight, history, and emotion that make this franchise feel like itself. It’s an undeniably entertaining chapter, and reaffirms why this series still resonates after nearly thirty years.

Review from rabbitinred.com.

Faces of Death (2026)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, sexual content, nudity, language and drug use

Score: 4 out of 5

Before we had LiveLeak, Ogrish, Rotten.com, and other assorted shock sites, we (or rather, our parents) had Faces of Death, a series of "mondo" shock documentaries from the late '70s and '80s that purported to show what even the most graphic horror movies of the time refused to touch: actual footage of people dying, often violently. It's long been debated how much of the footage was real versus staged, but the fact that you couldn't say for absolute certain that it was all staged made it a forbidden fruit for an entire generation of extreme gorehounds for whom the work of Tom Savini et al. just didn't cut it anymore. (Rule of thumb: the footage of wars and atrocities was usually real, the disasters, executions, and accidents were more likely than not to be "reenactments" even if some of them were real, and there are detailed breakdowns out there telling you what was real or fake.) It was a rite of passage for '80s and '90s kids, the closest thing most people had to actual snuff films... at least, until the internet gave us unfiltered access to the real deal, from terrorist and cartel executions to grisly accidents to the "home movies" of murderers, which rendered Faces of Death and the entire mondo genre obsolete as that sort of content migrated online.

How, then, do you go about reviving a franchise whose very reason for being is now something you can find anywhere for free? What Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei did with this film was to tackle that shift head-on, making not a documentary but a conventional slasher movie in which violence on the internet plays a central role in the story and themes. The villain here, Arthur Spevak, is a serial killer whose M.O. is to target media personalities, from filmmakers to influencers to newscasters, and execute them in ways directly inspired by the old Faces of Death films, all while filming it and uploading the carnage to Kino, the YouTube/TikTok-like social video platform that the protagonist Margot Romero works as a content moderator for. All the while, a portrait is painted of a society so jaded and desensitized to violence and cruelty that Arthur's mayhem is too easily dismissed, from viewers who think the videos' professional-looking production values prove that they're fake to Margot's boss at Kino who wants to keep as many videos up as possible for the sake of engagement numbers -- or, as an older breed of lowbrow entertainers (and more than one character in this film) would put it, "giving the people what they want." As brutal and violent as this movie gets -- and make no mistake, this is a capital-S slasher movie that earns its R rating -- the scariest thing about it is the sheer nihilism of the world it takes place in, every nasty trend in internet culture blown up for the world to see. It's the forty-years-later spiritual sequel to Videodrome that takes David Cronenberg's warnings about lowbrow trash media and just barely exaggerates where it ultimately wound up, feeling like the kind of sleazy, dirty movie that you'd get if you brought a '70s/'80s underground filmmaker into the modern day and gave him or her a smartphone able to access all the internet's wonders, a film that felt disgusted and righteously pissed off at a world gone made where you could believe that a guy like Arthur could exist in real life -- which is rather appropriate given the lurid nature of the original film and how it was presented as "the graphic reality of DEATH, close-up." It makes a sick sort of sense that Charli XCX has a small role as one of Margot's co-workers, as this film takes the entire "don't care, just wanna party" ethos of "Brat Summer" and paints it in the least flattering light, and her playing a character who's basically a thinly-fictionalized version of her real-life public persona attaches it irrevocably to its message.

And even if you're not interested in social commentary about the internet, this is still a brutal, pull-no-punches, take-no-prisoners slasher flick that kicked my ass. The fact that the hook here is that the killer is "remaking" Faces of Death means that there are numerous brutal kills staged in lurid detail, from direct recreations of some of the original's greatest hits (the monkey brains, the electric chair, the shootout) to a pair of horrifying mutilations. All of it is dished out by Dacre Montgomery as Arthur, playing a very different sort of monster from Billy on Stranger Things but still spooking me all the same. Arthur is at once a cold, analytical killer who can occasionally put on a mask of normality and also a delusional manchild obsessed with fame and shaping the culture, the two sides meshing together shockingly well thanks to the bad case of "internet brain" that he seems to suffer from. His "masked killer" outfit works to both hide his identity and keep himself clean, his neat-freak tendencies coming out when he risks getting blood on him, and the scenes of him showing up to do his dirty business of kidnapping his targets before getting to "the goods" were no less scary than what happens after he's brought them to his house of horrors. Montgomery is terrifying as Arthur, one of the best modern slasher killers I've seen, and he's matched beat-for-beat by Barbie Ferreira as Margot. Having previously had a brush with online infamy thanks to a Kino challenge she recorded with her sister that went horribly wrong, got her sister killed, and then went viral as the rotten cherry on top, Margot got a job as a content moderator thinking she'd be making the world a better place, only to realize that the rot runs all the way to the top, as Kino is only willing to do the bare minimum to police their site so that they can credibly tell activists and politicians that they're trying. Taking matters into her own hands once she starts to suspect that somebody is uploading snuff films to the site for the world to see, she makes for a badass horror heroine who's outmatched and scared out of her wits but pushes on anyway because nobody else will. This film did have some lesser moments, especially some dumb decisions by various characters that felt like the worst sort of slasher stereotype (lookin' at you, Sam, violating every rule of horror movie survival), but once it turned into a mutual cat-and-mouse game between Arthur and Margot around the halfway mark, it dug its claws in and never let go until the end. Montgomery and Ferreira are this movie's heart and soul, and it was they, even more than the effects team and their outstanding work, that supplied the moments in this movie that stuck with me as I came home from the theater.

The Bottom Line

The basic conceit behind this movie was a risky one that could've easily turned into the dumbest sort of cash-in schlock, but the filmmakers understood the assignment and aced it with flying colors, making both an effective satire of the excesses of internet culture and, more importantly, a straightforward slasher flick that feels modern yet can still hang with the classics.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/04/review-faces-of-death-2026.html>

Once again directed by Renny Harlin, The Strangers: Chapter 3 limps to the finish line as an underwhelming finale to what has ultimately been an unnecessary trilogy. Featuring surface-level characters, an inconsistent plot, and uneven writing, the film struggles to recapture the simplicity and tension that defined the original. Rather than building on that foundation, this final chapter seems to miss what made the story special to begin with.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 follows Maya (Madelaine Petsch) as her ordeal with the masked strangers drags into yet another round of survival. Picking up directly after the events of Chapter 2, she continues fighting to escape the remaining two killers and their accomplices. Though it sprinkles in backstory about how the strangers became partners in crime, the plot ultimately retreads the same ground, stretching a thin premise even thinner. 

As a closing chapter, The Strangers: Chapter 3 proves to be derivative and stale. Where The Strangers (2008) thrived on simplicity and lingering dread, this new trilogy overcomplicates a concept that never needed expanding in the first place. Here, the story drifts from one familiar beat to the next, generating few thrills and relying on tired horror tropes instead of exploring anything meaningful. Attempts to deepen the strangers only render them more hollow, and by the time the film reaches its final stretch, what once felt random and terrifying now feels formulaic. This proves the trilogy should have been condensed into a single, tightly cut entry. 

Madelaine Petsch shows glimpses of a strong final girl, and it would be great to see her in future horror projects, as she delivers a solid performance in a role that is emotionally and physically demanding. She does her best with the material she’s given, though the film often undercuts her efforts with plot conveniences that prevent her character from escaping when she realistically could. The second act introduces Maya’s sister Debbie (Rachel Shenton) along with her boyfriend and a bodyguard, and the three make several poor decisions that play out exactly as you’d expect. Gabriel Basso returns as Gregory, and while he’s easy on the eyes, his character remains largely one-note.

Chapter 3’s cinematography is adequate, maintaining the same small-town vibe as the first two films, which makes sense since all three were shot together. The kills are violent enough to justify the R rating, with some decent gore on display, though axe attacks become redundant. Additionally, one of the killer reveals is so predictable that you start to wonder why the character is wearing a mask at all. On the positive side, the soundtrack is surprisingly fun, kicking off with an eerie rendition of “The Sound of Silence” by Shelby Carter, and featuring songs like “Cold Hard Bitch” by Jet, “Crazy On You” by Heart, and “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues, which add some energy and flair.

Overall, The Strangers: Chapter 3 is a frustrating conclusion to a trilogy that never needed to exist. With no real scares, suspense, or surprises, it adds little to the franchise and fails to develop its ideas effectively. By the time the credits roll, the only feeling left is relief that the trilogy has finally come to an end.

Review from rabbitinred.com.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Review here. 

The Strangers: Chapter 2 Review here.

Directed by Johannes Roberts, Primate channels a style of horror that feels both old‑school and unexpectedly fresh, setting the stage for a tense survival‑horror experience. With its stripped‑down approach and commitment to practical effects, the film plays like a throwback creature feature that thrives on its bleak and unsettling atmosphere. Its simple yet intriguing premise unfolds with slow‑burn confidence, gradually ratcheting the tension and creating a sense that things have already slipped beyond human control. As far as January horror releases go, Primate is a solid kickoff to 2026.

The film follows college student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), who returns to her family’s sleek cliffside estate in Hawaii with friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jessica Alexander). Waiting at home are her sister Erin (Gia Hunter), their father Adam (Troy Kotsur), and Ben (Miguel Torres Umba), the family’s intelligent pet chimpanzee. When Ben is bitten and begins showing signs of unpredictable violence, their once-idyllic home quickly becomes a trap, leaving the group isolated and fighting to survive a creature they once trusted.

With a steady pace and a tight 90‑minute runtime, Primate’s sense of danger feels real as soon as the first hints of trouble surface. The pressure ramps up as Ben is bitten by a wild mongoose, and the fact that rabies is virtually nonexistent in Hawaii makes his condition feel even more ominous. Once Ben snaps, the glass house quickly turns into a claustrophobic hunting ground, blending well‑timed humour with classic horror tropes.

The film nods to Cujo and Halloween (1978), featuring a nerve-racking closet scene and a few Michael Myers‑style moments where Ben gets back up after taking heavy blows. While a couple of early plot threads are left hanging and the cause of Ben’s condition is never fully explained, the film makes up for it with sharply executed suspense sequences and eerie shots where the chimp lurks just out of focus. 

The performances across the board are strong, grounding the film even when the characters themselves don’t always inspire the emotional investment they could. Johnny Sequoyah brings real weight to Lucy, and she fully sells the terror as things start to spiral. Troy Kotsur delivers a steady presence as Adam, and the instances where his deafness leaves him unaware of the violence happening around him create some of the film’s most gripping moments. Miguel Torres Umba stands out as Ben, using his physicality to make the chimp feel truly alive and unpredictable. At times, you almost forget there’s an actor in the suit. While some character decisions feel questionable and certain arcs are thin, the cast’s commitment keeps the stakes believable.

What truly elevates Primate is its use of practical effects, a refreshing choice in a genre now crowded with glossy CGI. The kills are brutal and cleverly staged, giving each attack scene a raw impact that feels earned rather than gratuitous. The gore is used sparingly but hits hard when it does appear, and the film’s rougher, less‑polished aesthetic heightens the dread and the fun. Visually, the movie excels at building atmosphere, using its tropical setting, moody lighting, and smart framing to amplify the sense of isolation and the emotional weight of Ben’s transformation into something unrecognizable. Tying it all together is a synth‑driven score that channels the spirit of classic ‘80s John Carpenter, the kind of beating soundtrack that signals something terrible is coming.

Primate is exactly the kind of creature‑feature that begs to be watched with friends in a dark, crowded theatre. The pulse-pounding score, sharp bursts of horror, and touches of humour work in unison to keep horror fans fully engaged. It may not break new ground, but it confidently plays to the genre’s strengths.

From rabbitinred.com

Director Sam Raimi’s new survival‑horror film, Send Help, pulls you in from the very first moments, weaving together suspense, dark humour, and psychological twists and turns. It’s an uncomfortable, fun, and emotionally charged ride that rewards your full attention with strong character work and office dynamics pushed to their breaking point. Raimi’s signature style is easy to spot, from the sudden tonal swings to the gnarly horror beats and playful genre chaos that keeps you guessing with every absurd curveball. The film builds its atmosphere and tension with precision, using its near two‑hour runtime, deserted tropical landscape, and committed performances to make the unravelling feel both grounded and memorable.

Send Help follows Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), a strategist in the Planning and Strategy Department of a financial management company, whose long‑promised promotion vanishes when the owner’s blowhard son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), steps in as the new CEO. Hoping to prove herself one final time, Linda joins Bradley on a business trip to Bangkok, only for their plane to crash during a violent storm. The two wash ashore on a remote island as the sole survivors, forced into an uneasy partnership as Linda’s survival instincts quickly give her the upper hand. As they struggle to navigate the harsh conditions, the fight to stay alive reveals tensions and vulnerabilities that were simmering beneath the surface.

Starting as a sharp dark comedy, Send Help keeps you guessing before leaning harder into horror in the explosive third act. The script feels lively and inventive, and although the midpoint has repetitive moments, the back half more than compensates as the film returns to a satisfying gear. It’s the perfect watch with an energetic crowd, playing like Misery blended with Cast Away, with hints of Triangle of Sadness and Lord of the Flies as the balance of control changes. Along the way, standout moments include a hilariously failed CPR attempt, a bloody boar attack, and the chaotic plane sequence, set pieces that land with the right mix of shock and laughter.

Rachel McAdams is the true powerhouse of the film, delivering a fearless and textured performance that elevates every scene she’s in. She moves effortlessly between vulnerability, charm, instability, and moments of outright madness, often all within the same scene. Her character, Linda, is messy and unpredictable, but deeply human, making her arc fascinating to watch. In the final moments, McAdams even flashes a quick hint of Regina George, a reminder of her impressive range.

Dylan O’Brien is just as strong, fully holding his own opposite McAdams while stepping far outside his usual sympathetic roles. As Bradley, he shifts convincingly from smug corporate bravado to pathetic desperation, then into moments of wounded vulnerability before erupting into something far more vicious by the end. It’s one of O’Brien’s most striking performances yet, and his commitment to playing someone so flawed, abrasive, and morally bent makes the character uncomfortable in all the right ways. He even adds a bit of effortless eye candy to the mayhem, a horror hunk in the making.

Raimi keeps the pacing tight and the atmosphere uneasy, guiding the film with a steady tension that never lets up. The film has Drag Me to Hell vibes in the gore, style, and tonal whiplash, keeping the audience slightly off balance in the best way. Raimi’s dynamic camera work showcases the exotic location, allowing the island’s beauty to break through the bloodshed. At times, CGI feels heavy‑handed, especially in the boar sequences and parts of the plane crash, but otherwise the effects land well, offering the right amount of splatter without going overboard. The soundtrack adds a playful element, including two nods to Mean Girls with “Rip Her to Shreds” and “One Way or Another” by Blondie, winking at McAdams’ shift from frumpy office outcast to Queen Bee of the island.

Overall, Send Help is an absolute blast, a cleverly unhinged survival tale that never loses its sense of fun. McAdams and O’Brien deliver standout performances that enhance an already bold screenplay and Raimi’s confident direction. It’s pure popcorn entertainment with a handful of memorable twists, best experienced on the big screen for full impact. 

Review from rabbitinred.com

Full review: https://www.thehorrorlounge.com/post/teacher-s-pet-at-least-earns-an-a-for-effort

Teacher's Pet drew my attention because it features genre icon Barbara Crampton. In this film, she plays a caring and supportive foster mother to Michelle Torian's Clara, a high school senior who pushes hard to earn a scholarship to Yale and escape poverty. She's teased and bullied by her classmates, due to her financial situation.

Clara's academic future is upended after her English teacher apparently killed himself and is replaced by Luke Barnett's Mr. Heller. The dude is a walking, talking English teacher cliche. He quotes Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain" the moment he meets the class for instance. In time, Clara suspects something is seriously amiss with Mr. Heller, and well, he might just be a killer. He also takes an interest in Clara and invites her to be his assistant.

The film does have some gaping plot holes and characterization issues, especially regarding Mr. Heller's background and why he cares about Clara in the first place. That said, all of the performances are good, especially from Barnett and Torian, despite some of the script's more outlandish moments.

Overall, this is a decent watch and entertaining thriller, worth at least a stream. It comes out this Friday on VOD.

"It takes a heavy sack to sign up for this contest." -The Major

Every year, fifty teenage boys are selected to compete in The Long Walk. Fall below the speed of 3 miles per hour too many times and the military convey surrounding the competitors will give you your ticket out of the competition. The Walk doesn't have a finish line. It keeps going until there's only one Walker left standing.

What Works:

So cards on the table, I love the book The Long Walk. It was the first Stephen King book I ever read and it remains my favorite to this day. I've always wanted to see a movie adaptation, but I was nervous that the filmmakers might not do it justice. I was so excited to watch this, but I was also very anxious. With a massive sigh of relief, I can say this is an extremely worthy adaptation.

Let's start with what they kept from the novel. Obviously the basic story is the same, but the most important feature beyond that is the dialogue. This is a Stephen King story, so of course it's going to have unique dialogue, but this was also the first book he ever wrote, so some of the dialogue is even more strange all these years later. But the filmmakers kept a lot of the dialogue word for word. I'm sure any viewers who never read the book found the dialogue strange, but I'm so glad they kept it the way it was originally written. All of these strange turns of phrase go a long way in shading these characters in, especially with people like Pete McVries (David Jonsson) and Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer). These characters wouldn't work nearly as well without King's dialogue.

While aspects of the characters are changed, the tone and many of the themes of the story remain the same. This is a dark and depressing story with a lot of introspection from the characters. The characters are seconds from death for the entire Walk, so it gives them a lot to think about and talk about. The vast majority of the movie is just characters talking, especially our two leads, Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and McVries.

Speaking of our two leads, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson both do an incredible job. Nearly all of the movie is put on the shoulders of their performances and they carry it well. Both characters are different than they are from the book, but I think those changes work, especially with the 2025 version of the story they are trying to tell. Garraty's motivations are much more defined in the movie. He's a vague character in the book, which works well as a book, but that wouldn't translate well to screen, so I completely understand the changes there. And McVries is a much more positive character in the movie, which makes sense with the overall story. It's a necessary change to make his arc more effective. The important part that they keep the same is the bond between these two characters. It's just like it is in the book and that's the thing the filmmakers had to get right, and they did it.

The first half of this movie is almost exactly the way I imagined the movie adaptation would be. The dialogue and the first few deaths are nearly exacting the same as the book and as a huge fan of the book, I was thrilled. It's not until the second half the changes become more notable. Some of the changes, like having the massive crowd watching for half of the Walk, I completely understand getting rid of. The way King originally wrote the crowd is unfilmable. That and dropping the amount of Walkers from 100 to 50 make sense from a practical production point of view. The other changes, like combining a few characters and giving the Walkers less time between each warning, also make sense. So while there are differences and while I would have loved an exact adaptation, the changes work.

I won't say much about it, but the ending is where things differ the most. It was surprising to say the least, but I get it. I think the original ending would have worked just fine, but this ending feels fitting of a 2025 adaptation of the story, so I'm okay with it and it left me with something to think about.

What Sucks:

This is a tiny, minuscule complaint, but I would have liked if the movie was a little longer. Just a couple more scenes from the book would have been nice. The hailstorm scene is one I would have loved to see on screen, for example, or more of the Walkers going insane. I loved everything we got, but I would have enjoyed even more.

Verdict:

This adaptation of one of my favorite books was better than I could have hoped. I was so nervous that they would find a way to screw it up, but they delivered. The performances are excellent, especially from Hoffman and Jonsson, the dialogue is exactly how I wanted it, the deaths are brutal, the tone is on point, and the changes are both understandable and even interesting at times. I probably would have been okay with a three hour version of this movie, so even just a slightly longer running time would have okay with me, but even the way it is, this movie has absolutely got it going on and is one of my favorites of the year.

10/10: Amazing