Movie Review: Candyman (2021)

the horror continues... 48 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Candyman (2021) on Prime

Not gonna lie, Candyman was way better than I expected. Since I hadn't seen the original films, I don't really know why I expected this to be a giant dud. Probably the ridiculous premise of saying Candyman five times in a mirror means he will show up and instantly kill you dead. Jordan Peele was a co-writer and co-producer on this film so I guess that tracks, I am a fan. Decent pacing and a story that kept me engaged. Although it might have been funnier if you had to say Candyman like 85 times to get him to show up. Imagine the suspense! 8 free pieces of candy you probably don't want out of 10.

Movie Review: Trilogy of Terror (1975)

the horror continues... 49 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Trilogy of Terror (1975) on Prime

Not sure I can say anything about this 1975 cult classic "ABC movie of the week" that hasn't already been said. Three horror stories, each starring horror icon Karen Black in different roles with the last one being the most memorable. The Zuni Warrior Fetish doll that comes to life really really wants to kill our dear Amelia. I had never actually seen this movie and I was pretty damn entertained watching this little bastard shaking his knife under the bathroom door. The writing holds up even if the decor is super dated. The 70s were wild, man. 6 rows of Zuni fetish doll teeth out of 10.

Movie Review: Antlers (2021)

the horror continues... 50 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Antlers (2021) on HBOmax

(SPOILERS?): Well, for starters I think the name Antlers isn't doing this movie any favors. They should have gone with something catchier, maybe curse related, like Curse of the Wendigo or Soul Stealing Meth Creature from the Empty Mine. But overall I liked this movie. It wasn't terrifying but it wasn't dumb like a lot of horror can get thanks to a decent script and famed producer Guillermo del Toro. Another legit spooky tale for the Halloween season.

Lucas is a young boy from Buttcrack, Oregon, where there's only one sheriff and one deputy, but lots of economically challenged families, trauma and abuse. His school teacher Julia (played by Keri Russell) notices Lucas struggling in school and she reaches out. She finds out his mother died and he lives with his drug addicted dad and homeschooled little brother. But that's not all. His dad is slowly turning into a ferocious mythical woodland beast. Lucas is bringing his dad and little brother rotten animal corpses and keeping them locked up in the attic. Eventually the transformation is complete and the mutilated bodies start piling up when dad escapes. Everything culminates in the big final fight scene which felt a little tiny bit phoned-in, if I'm being honest.

Antlers was way better than it should have been, but still somehow not great enough to break through the horror flick morass. If you like your movies dark and spooky and set near some dense forests with tragically depressed characters all harboring terrible secrets, this film might be for you. 7 piles of animal poo in your school book bag out of 10.

Movie Review: Hellbender (2021)

the horror continues... 51 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Hellbender (2021) on Shudder

Hellbender is a coming of age story for young witches. This particular “Hellbender” duo is a mom and daughter who have a little rock band (also called Hellbender) that also feeds the soundtrack with some culty pop rock. The mother seems weirdly possessive and darkly domineering but the daughter has some twisted secrets of her own. I kinda wish they explained some more of their witchy spells and voodoo, but also the story could have used a tad more drama. Still a decent, creepy little Halloween time movie. 8 earthworms in your cup out of 10.

Movie Review: Saloum (2021)

the horror continues... 52 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Saloum (2021) on Shudder

Saloum didn’t feel like a horror movie for so long I was starting to ask questions. Then we crossed the rubicon and it changed from three deadly African mercenaries and a cartel guy on the run, getting long sought revenge to “oh shit! evil spirits are going right in your earholes till you’re dead.” The movie is mostly in French but there is a significant amount of sign language so bring your reading glasses. Overall a solid flick with some interesting themes and exotic locations, 7 kidnapped children out of 10.

Movie Review: The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)

the horror continues... 53 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974) on Shudder

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and 14 other titles) is a cult classic 70s Spanish-Italian horror movie with some fresh, flesh-hungry zombies that just might be the most quintessential zombie flick ever. Our hero, anti-authoritarian hippy George accidentally meets Edna after she backs over his motorcycle at a gas station. He guilts her into driving him to his destination in a nearby town. They bicker and get lost. George stops near a cemetery to ask for directions. He sees a large machine in a field. It turns out the Ministry of Agriculture are using experimental ultra-sonic radiation to kill all the insects for miles, inadvertently bringing the dead back to life.

While Edna waits at the car, she is attacked by the undead. More people get attacked, some people are eaten, but the cops eventually think George and Edna are a drug-addled hippy satanist cult. "Looks like a pretty typical case of satanists holding black masses" says one. George figures out that the root cause is the Ministry of Agriculture machine and shows up to destroy it. They think he's crazy and flee the scene while he yells out "Come back! We're all in danger!" Indeed, if the zombies won't get you, the cops probably will. The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue may seem pretty dated in 2022 but it hit all the right notes with this 1970s kid. Probably better than 90% of all the horror films I've watched in the last few years. 9 zombies feasting on your entrails out of 10.

Movie Review: Who Invited Them (2022)

the horror continues... 54 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Who Invited Them (2022) on Shudder

An oddly predictable story about two of the most annoying party crashers ever who turn out to be even more annoying when their secrets are revealed. I didn't quite notice the genre was Horror AND Comedy before I started the film but I didn't find myself laughing. The premise seemed like it deserved better than the cringeworthy characters and a plot that treads tepid water for most of the film. I need to pick better films. 4 pet hamsters in your mouth out of 10.

Movie Review: Moloch (2022)

the horror continues... 55 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Moloch (2022) on Shudder

Moloch is pretty close to a perfect Halloween season horror flick. A little mystery, a bit of folklore, some freaky family curse, an ancient evil diety, the haunted whispers of spirits and enough intrigue to carry you through to the big reveal. It feels like Shudder really goes for the newer foreign horror films and it pays off big time for them. That or I just love reading captions.

Set in the Netherlands at the edge of a peat bog, Betriek and her family are attacked by a stranger one night. The more she investigates, the more she realizes things are NOT WHAT THEY SEEM. There are researchers digging in the bog and finding well preserved women, all with their throats slit. The local bag man dies digging a hole. Grandpa misses grandaughter's play. Grandma is having weird seizures. A researcher pukes outside of a bar. What does all of that have to do with these attacks and the scary old local legend of Feike? Well you'll have to watch to find out. I can't ruin it. 8.5 packets of sugar out of 10.

Movie Review: Titane (2021)

the horror continues... 56 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Titane (2021) on Hulu

SPOILERS(?): If you like your movies weird, French, dark and seemingly pointless, Titane may be the film for you. Although hailed by critics and the Palme d'Or winner at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, I am gloriously unencumbered by the allegories and metaphors and am required by law to dumb things down for my own simple man viewing needs. This is what smart people call "body horror" and I am apparently not a fan.

Alexia is a serial killer stripper with a titanium plate inside her head from a childhood car accident. She LOVES cars, so much so that she ends up getting pregnant by one (not kidding). Somehow the constant murdering gets too crazy and she ends up deciding to disguise herself as a boy who went missing 10 years ago by cutting her hair, strapping down her boobs and breaking her nose. She moves in with the boy's steroid-addicted, firefighter dad and becomes part of the erotic mosh-pit techno dancing firefighting crew, although they think she is an effeminate boy who is mentally challenged.

After a while, one of them figures out she's not who she says but the dad protects her and eventually acknowledges "whoever you are, you're my son". What? Anyway things get weirder and weirder (if that's possible) as this half-cadillac baby inside her causes her to secrete motor oil out her hoo-ha (and more). The missing kid's mom even shows up and she knows the storyline is bullshit but she doesn't care or stick around. Finally there is a climactic birthing scene that I refuse to acknowledge further or describe in detail and the movie ends. Interesting themes and originality can only carry a film so far. Body horror might be an ok genre but in Titane it felt like a weird contrivance for a film that couldn't decide where it belonged. Whatever. 5 oil squirts in your boxer briefs out of 10.

Movie Review: The Yellow Wallpaper (2021)

the horror continues... 57 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: The Yellow Wallpaper (2021) on Prime

SPOILERS(?) Not really sure how to describe this film version of The Yellow Wallpaper. I guess for starters it's a massively influential early feminist story from 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that illustrates the oppressive nature of the patriarchal society of the time. But as a film, it's just almost entirely oppressive and bleak and nearly unwatchable. The movie is listed as a horror film but the only real horror here is sitting through a solid hour and 39 minutes of a depressed woman getting more depressed and going insane because of it.

The Yellow Wallpaper is an excruciatingly tedious and unpleasant experience and it took everything I had to get through it. It was an epic endurance test, like watching someone slowly peeling wallpaper, which is exactly what happens for the last 10 minutes or so. Maybe I'm SUPPOSED to feel like this after watching, in which case, they nailed it. Otherwise, if you're looking for something frightful for the Halloween season, look elsewhere. If you must watch it, bring a pillow. For all it's worth, I give The Yellow Wallpaper 3 remote country estates out of 10.

Movie Review: In the Earth (2021)

the horror continues... 58 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: In the Earth (2021) on Hulu

SPOILERS(?): Imagine getting kidnapped deep in the woods by a lunatic who drugs you to keep you from trying to escape. Then imagine escaping with a few less toes only to run into the lunatic's scientist wife who is trying to communicate with the forest using science, but she can't so she uses an ancient dusty spellbook called "Hammer of the Witches" (new band name?).

Add all that together during a pandemic, along with a malevolent forest, the spirit of some old guy in a stone edifice, lots of loud scary music, a bunch of strobe lights set all over the place, a ghastly mist of mushroom spores, and you end up tripping balls. A lot of tripping balls. Trying to avoid getting murdered. That is more or less the premise of In the Earth, which gets a grisly 5 chopped off toes out of 10.

Movie Review: The Night House (2020)

the horror continues... 59 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: The Night House (2020) on HBOmax

possible SPOILERS(?): The Night House was a fairly compelling ghost story that kept the tension and interest for a majority of the film. Except towards the end, where things got supernaturally wonky.

Beth is a recent widower whose husband mysteriously took his own life. As the tale unfolds you are drawn layer by layer into the enigma onion that was her husband, Owen. What was he up to? Bad things? Uh oh. Tell me more! Owen was an architect who designed their beautiful house on the lake. But he had other secrets! Like another house across the lake that was nearly identical. Owen also had some strange photos on his phone. Maybe even some dead bodies lying around.

Eventually there's a part of the movie where Beth is like, "Yes! I'm going to totally bone my dead husband's ghost. I really miss him." (note: not an actual quote) and I was like "No please, please don't kick me out of my cinematic dreamscape with some cheap ghost boner" which switched quickly to "OMG to whom does this ghost boner belong?" which felt like some reality show where ghost boners get voted off ghost boner island. (new band name?)

Anyway, I liked the movie despite the parts where the evil spirit is just picking people up and throwing, choking, dragging, and smashing them against a mirror. I mean, if he could do that all along, why didn't he do it earlier? Why all the forcing someone else do it?? By the time it was over I wasn't mad about it, so I'll give The Night House 7 mirror image houses across the lake out of 10.

Movie Review: Run (2020)

so it begins... 60 nights till Halloween!
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tonight's feature: Run (2020) on Hulu

Run was a decent little nightmare of a movie, even if the character development was severely lacking and it felt like I was watching a longer version of the spoiler-heavy trailer. Sarah Paulson was pretty convincing in her role as psychotic mom Diane. Not terrifying but a little edge-of-my-seat dramatic with a solid "huh?" ending. I've seen better, and I've definitely seen worse. It could have used another 10 minutes of setup before the big reveal? Another character? Nobody knows. Anyway, 6 dangerous prescriptions you shouldn't be taking out of 10.