Cinema Freaks 2020 New Horror Recommendations

Enough talk about bad movies. Let’s relish in the good. Halloween is almost here in this year of 2020 when everything is a mess. Why not have some fun with some of the more creative horror you can find recently? Here are a few of my recent favorites.

Scare Me

This is really like nothing I’ve seen – not because of anything it does, but because of what it omits. It’s a horror anthology film like others you’ve seen (Trick ‘R’ Treat, Tales of Halloween, etc), and it references old horror films gratuitously. But unlike a lot of these things, it focuses only on two characters just acting out their stories in a snowy, stormy, candle-lit cabin at night. No cutaways, no other actors. No adornments. It’s just pure storytelling. The movie functions as a love-letter to horror storytelling and to the old classics stretching back decades, digging deep into what worked and what’s been done and why it’s all so captivating. And the way the two leads play off one another is great, with wonderful dialogue. But it also goes the other way too, and works in some modern gender politics and themes. If you’re dead-set against thinking about any of those things, or if anything related to those themes just sounds like woke-scold feminist virtue signaling or whatever the fuck, go ahead and skip this movie. Your loss. More for the rest of us. This made me think and I love watching it do its own absurd thing.

Host

This was made during the pandemic, and is a story pretty simple, one you’ve heard before – some people do a séance, it goes wrong. Only this time it’s done over Zoom and with all the usual things that come with that mess. It’s mostly all women and they’re all good at what is needed for this movie. There’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but refreshingly, the movie cuts out the bullshit and the fat. No cliches or dumb unnecessary parts. Just a solid ghost story. What I appreciated about this is the slapdash, spontaneous creativity. It was made during this awful pandemic. Human creativity shone through the worst of it and made something enjoyable of it. I dig it.

Spiral

Two gay guys in the 1990s move to a mysterious small town where nothing is as it seems. This is a very traditional sort of psychological horror, but we haven’t seen much like it in a few years now. There’s a real sense of darkness and paranoia to this that just works. It’s fun to watch and eerie because you get in the main dude’s head. I’m glad to see more inclusivity in horror movies. Plus the climax is cool as hell. This is just all-around solid.

The Color Out Of Space

Outrageous, vivacious and bombastic, this Richard Stanley comeback and Lovecraft adaptation is entertaining all the way through. Eschewing the idea that all horror films have to look dark and grungy, this is bright and alien - almost obtrusively so. With some climate change references, it's timely enough. But the main draw is the insane roller-coaster ride of the plot and pacing, and the nightmareish way it escalates. This is a funhouse of gleefully occult, indescribable horrors. Check it out.

La Llorona

A very different sort of horror film, about the family of this aging, disgraced Guatemalan dictator dealing with the fallout of his criminal trial. This is about politics and the larger implications of generational violence. It's artful, quiet and subtle. For long stretches it doesn't even seem to be a horror movie, so much as a drama. I think this is inscrutable, poignant and layered stuff.

Find all of the previous movies listed on: Shudder

SiREN

Back in 2011 or so the first V/H/S movie seemed really kick ass, compared to some other shit coming out then. It had a certain fun, schlocky, dark factor to it. This is a whole movie version of the first story from that first movie, about a bunch of guys at a bachelor party who run afoul of this demon chick. It’s fun because it’s just a back to basics horror story. It’s not artsy like some things now, and the writing is still solid no matter what you like. There are a few weird elements – I was surprised to see a psychic element to some of the characters. But that’s cool because overall the whole thing doesn’t rely on tropes too much. Just macabre, creative horror. Go see it.

Find it on: Netflix

Antebellum (2020)

Yup, I'm still doing these things. It's been a while, but we're back.

This is a new horror movie about a modern writer who seemingly finds herself back in the times of slavery somehow. This was billed as something like other recent black-centric horror films like Get Out. But that isn't really accurate in the least.

Directors: Gerard Bush, Christopher Renz

Starring: Janelle Monae, Eric Lange, Jena Malone

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

We start right off in the thick of it – slavery times, complete with some Confederate generals killing a few slaves trying to run away. The main character is Eden, who we see subject to a horrific branding at the hands of this one guy. It’s all hard as fuck to watch. You’re really just sitting there at these parts going boy, this must be building up to some really grand point to make us watch all this horrible torture and killings; I wonder what cerebral, intelligent things this movie is going to give us to make up for showing this!

One girl is pregnant and asked to go and fuck this one soldier, who is made fun of for not being able to talk to her. At first it seems like she’s going to be OK and maybe make a connection with this guy, maybe he could get her out or something. Nope! He goes apeshit and hits her a few times, including kicking her in the stomach. What a completely heinous scene to watch. All these scenes with the Confederates are only gratifying if you picture these guys having bad things happen to them. Get creative! Maybe this guy always feels like he left his oven on and is thus never at peace with the world.

Eventually, after like 30 minutes of this horrific shit, we switch gears and the main girl wakes up in bed, a successful writer named Veronica, living in the modern times with a husband and a kid and everything. Wow! What kind of unpredictable twists are we gonna see to make sense of this? We get a few fairly nice scenes of the family doing regular stuff, which are really just relieving because I didn’t need to see any more fucking slavery scenes. You could have showed paint drying and it would’ve suddenly seemed like a relief.

There are a few weird things happening, though – what’s up with the strange Southern white lady who Skypes her and says a bunch of cryptic stuff? I dunno, and neither does Veronica. And what’s up with the strange little girl in period clothing who says cryptic stuff to Veronica in the hotel elevator later like “you shouldn’t be talking”? Boy, white people sure are cryptic, huh?

Then there’s a scene where the mysterious Southern lady from the Skype call enters Veronica’s hotel room while she’s away and uses the toilet without flushing apparently. And these fucks think they’re the superior race… please…

There’s a fairly elongated scene of Veronica and some friends at a restaurant, in which one friend schools this guy trying to buy them drinks because he sent over something other than champagne. Personally if this happened to me I’d cut my losses and go find someone else to talk to. I dunno. These scenes are well-acted and all, I guess, but the pacing is so slow. It’s like the pacing of waiting for your mom to finish talking to a friend at the grocery store. Get to the fucking point!

Leaving the restaurant, Veronica gets in a weird Uber where the driver cranks up the music super loud and, on the phone, she finds out that there wasn’t an Uber called for her after all. That sends the panic flaring. This is one of the only really effective scares and it’s barely even a scare. The one Confederate jackass pops out from the back like a fucking Freddy Krueger scene and slams her head against the window.

Aaaaaand here’s the big reveal – the whole thing never took place in the 1800s. Actually it was all just in modern times and a bunch of jackass rich people kidnapped black people to simulate slavery, like the world’s most repugnant Civil War reenactment. Why would you want to pretend to live in the 1800s with no electricity, modern toilets, etc? Seems miserable as fuck even if you’re the one in power. I guess the racism is such a powerful drug that they’re willing to wipe their asses with tree bark and sweat all day for it. Anything to own the libs, right?!

Long story short, Veronica kills all the racist conservatives – one of whom is actually a politician, surprise surprise. It’s gratifying to watch her burn them alive and then punch that one white lady in the face a bunch of times. But really, this was what it was building up to? All the torture, rape and whatnot, all for a few passable scenes of violence against the bad guys? That’s kind of like setting your house on fire and then throwing water on it, expecting to get accolades and praise. It wasn’t worth it.

Also, the characters were pretty much undefined. What did we even know about any of them? No real distinct traits aside from racism (for the white characters) and not wanting to be a slave (for the black characters). What a masterpiece of literature.

What was the message here, anyway? Slavery was bad and there are racists in the U.S. who want to keep black people down? Not exactly deep, and the film doesn’t say anything unique or layered about what to do or what the root of the problem is. The twist is that everything was taking place in a section of a preserved plantation owned by this politician guy. How did they kidnap that many people and force them to comply? Were they drugged or threatened somehow? How did nobody with a conscience know about this and stop it almost immediately? The politician guy would’ve had to take a fuckload of time off work to come role play. But hell, a lot of conservatives don’t care about shit as long as their guy is suitably racist, so touche, movie.

Mostly it just seems like an excuse for aimless racist violence. I get it, sometimes art has to show uncomfortable truths. But the second you revealed that plot twist and nothing was actually taking place in the past, what the fuck was the point of any of this then? Mostly torture porn and pointless violence against black people, it seems.

Friend Request (2016)

Friend Request is a horror movie about what happens when you turn down a friend request from a crazy witch on social media.

Director: Simon Verhoeven

Starring: Alycia Debnam-Carey, Connor Paolo

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

If you’ve seen Unfriended, you basically know what you’re gonna get here. It’s one of these ‘college’ movies written by someone who’s whole idea of college was shaped on like, 1990s cheesy sitcoms or whatever. The main characters are all the cool popular kids who have expensive parties, and they post dumb pictures on Facebook of them at the beach, kissing, eating and drinking and smiling!

It’s funny because, while I guess it’s accurate that they’d do this kind of stuff, the writing is bereft of any kind of character or personality. So the whole movie has the effect of being like a bunch of shallow Facebook profiles came to life. That’s pretty funny if it was intentional; but you know it fucking wasn’t.

I'd also like to point out how random the main group is... you've got the one blandly popular white chick, an overweight mixed-race-looking girl, a somewhat fat comedic relief guy, a blonde Karen type girl, and another dude that looks like a stereotype of a 'loner' with a weird haircut and tattoos. It's like a fucking focus group. Make them feel like real people! That might actually lend your movie some humanity.

I guess the story is this girl Laura, basically a wax mannequin that talks, befriends this weird girl with a black hoodie always over her head! The girl, Marina, immediately gets weird as she starts commenting and liking everything Laura posts, sending her strange messages and all that – oh and she has zero other friends. Who the fuck has ZERO other friends? There was nobody else?

It would be easy just to press the ‘block’ button, but don’t tell the movie THAT… instead, they just have Laura unfriending Marina and then going to a big luxurious party that’s about as expensive looking as your average presidential candidate Wall Street fundraiser. Like holy shit. How are we supposed to care about these people? Not really leaning on sympathy here, movie. It’s like this was made by those jackasses that think $170K a year is “middle class.” “Oh, they’re so relatable, they only have TWO pontoon boats!” “You only drink $600 a bottle wine? You fucking pleb!”

But yeah, then the Marina girl kills herself on video after ripping up a picture of Laura! I guess the ghost of Marina posted the suicide video on Laura’s Facebook, too. This causes the police to investigate in the best way possible – by calling Laura into the principal’s office and interrogating her about it. The cops say the video posting thing means she should delete her account, which is the funniest thing in the movie bar none – just the cops officially ordering this college girl to delete her social media. I love that. I'll never write anything that funny.

They also inquire if she knows where Marina's body might be. Isn't that YOUR fucking job, you assholes?

Then all Laura’s friends start to die off. This one guy dies from banging his own head on an elevator wall. Another chick commits suicide in the basement of a hospital – oh, and here you get the requisite Creepy Hospital Scene (TM) that every fucking horror movie has to have, with dark halls and stuff. They all see weird zombie hallucinations and wasps and shit before they die, too. Wasn’t this a movie about a Facebook ghost? Were the writers drinking moonshine the whole time?

There is also this other guy, Kobe, who looks like some kind of weird tattooed drug addict with bad hair. This guy is the stereotypical hacker character who just types in nonsense on any computer and brings up a bunch of technological gibberish and then delivers monologues on how ominous it all is. What a deus ex machina of a character! He also learns about the occult as soon as it’s revealed that Marina is a witch using black magic. Boy, this guy is just a veritable swiss army knife.

Speaking of that, yeah, that’s the origin story for Marina! Her mother was apparently a witch who lived in an orphanage and burned it down – or some bullshit like that. I honestly don’t know. The movie goes through the process of telling us that her pregnant mother, burned to a crisp in the fire, was kept alive just to give birth to her! What a pleasant image for a throwaway back story in a shitty ghost movie!

Then when she was growing up, a bunch of young boys assaulted and attacked her for years. The voice-over says she was doing pretty well against them as it shows them punching her, which is kind of funny. Though apparently later, she had them mutilated or whatever. Good. Fuck those little twerps anyway.

In the real-time again, more of their friends die – including one girl who falls out a window just when Laura and her boyfriend are driving up in the car. Convenient. Nice and snappy. An efficient death... thumbs up on the app rating for the algorithm, for sure.

Oh and I love the gimmick this movie has of showing Laura's declining FB friend count as the ghost posts more things to her account without her consent. It does it even when the fucking camera shows Laura watching her friend in the hospital with broken bones, covered in fucking bandages. Priorities, ladies and gentlemen! Fuck the immense pain. HER FRIEND COUNT IS LOWERING!!!

Then they all have to go to the ruins of this orphanage or whatever, and do you really even care? These dumb ass movies always have the characters going to some erroneous journey to some foreboding looking place. It really just makes the places so much less cool, because now they’re associated with the nonsensical writing and mundane, rote plotting. It’s like the opposite of a travel guide.

One of the only interesting parts of the whole film is when that Kobe guy turns on Laura because the ghost only wants to kill all her friends, not Laura herself. Kobe tries to kill her, thinking it could save his life. This is mildly clever at least, and could have been a kind of subversion from the usual nonsense these movies always have – oh, look, an actual character with a motive that contradicts the protagonist’s! But really I think this was just like a dying gasp of intelligence before the script just goes totally senile; like a brief, painful moment of clarity that something better could have been possible.

I guess Laura then gets killed by the ghost, and the final shot is HER in a weird black hoodie now with a laptop! Implying that the whole thing was actually transferrable. I thought the first girl was just a witch on her own. Now I guess it’s a ghost/possession/transfer sort of thing. I don’t know. I am positive whoever made this just wanted to get it over with to get the money and go save his family from the mafia or whatever.

This movie is just nonsense. The whole thing is all the cliché you ever knew from movies like this, but somehow even more disoriented and droll, like a senile grandpa just wandering in the street. Help this movie get back to its nursing home. It doesn’t need to keep straining itself.

Image copyright its original owners; I don't own it.

The Perfection (2018)

I… uh… you know, I don’t have an intro for this. Just read on and I’ll explain what this is.

Director: Richard Shepard

Starring: Allison Williams, Logan Browning

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This one starts off with a girl named Charlotte, whose mother has died and so she can finally go back to playing the cello like she always wanted. She meets her teacher’s new protege, Lizzie, who has been in the New York Times, so that’s cool. Then through a rapid-fire series of scenes of them playing the cello, they drink together and then have sex and are in a relationship enough to go to China together!

Well, you can say a lot of things about musicians. Apparently they move fucking fast. Charlotte says this is the first time she’s ever had sex, since she spent so much time with her dying mother for years. Well, so far so good. I’m sure this will just be a movie about a romance. How sweet.

In China, the two almost immediately have problems when Lizzie starts getting sick. It quickly begins to escalate when they’re on a bus in the middle of nowhere and Lizzie begins to vomit up worms. She wonders if she has that virus that had been reported in China (… you know, I’m not going there for this), and, no, my friend, what you have is apparently much fucking worse. Vomiting up worms – this is some Exorcist shit.

So, OK. It’s a body-horror flick. Cool.

Then the bus driver kicks them off and they just have to wander around in the middle of the mountains with Lizzie dying. She sees bugs exploding out of her arm and Charlotte then immediately produces a giant meat cleaver out of nowhere and goes “you know what you have to do!” Uh, anyone who carries around a fucking meat cleaver and just pulls it out at the ready is nobody I want to be around.

But then the movie ‘rewinds’ itself in a very weird and stupid manner to SHOW US WHAT REALLY HAPPENED! Apparently, Charlotte actually got some hallucinogenics and slipped them to Lizzie, suggesting subtly that bugs were in her skin. Then she also stole a meat cleaver from a restaurant just for the right time to use. This is some psycho shit, man. The character from Single White Female is going “wow, that’s fucked.” Why’d she have to go all the way to China to do this? How did she know the bus driver would just abandon them? I have so many questions. If they had taken her to a hospital, none of it would’ve worked and the whole plan would’ve been shot. I guess it’s just dumb.

So, OK… now I guess it’s a weird revenge/sociopath type of story! Cool! Are you done trying on different genres of films like it’s a department clothing store? I mean, Jesus Christ, this has more personalities than the homeless guy down the street from me.

Then we flash forward a few weeks to back in America, as Lizzie shows up at the music school like a lost orphan with one hand. The teacher, Anton, immediately shows no regard for her well-being at all and basically kicks her out for losing her hand. What a class act! “You suffered a traumatic injury, now GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT!” This is the kind of guy who grades child cancer patients’ drawings as ‘mediocre at best.’ What a douche!

So instead, she goes and fights Charlotte at her house in the suburbs – wait, so Charlotte’s whole big plan went like:

1. Go trick girl into sleeping with you.
2. Go to China and drug her and make her cut off her own hand!
3. Go home and live in a suburban home and do nothing.

What a plan! She sure is keeping busy these days. I guess it’s good to have a full calendar. That’s the spice of life.

Then Lizzie kidnaps Charlotte and takes her back to the music mansion where Anton the weirdo music teacher just invites them both back in. It’s revealed through some weird flashbacks that, actually, this music school is a weird rape cult where the teacher makes you have sex with him if you mess up the music! What a twist! We also learn that Charlotte was apparently institutionalized before, likely because of the rape cult stuff, and had electroshock therapy.

What a tasteful plot. I’m glad this movie is really shining a light on the plight of sexual assault victims by showing us a bunch of sensational gaudy bullshit twists. Actually it's trash and uses heavy subjects as fodder to be shocking and garish, making it really very immature.

Like this shit is crazy – Anton and his goons, with Lizzie on their side, have Charlotte shackled to a chair and threaten to rape a little girl if she doesn’t do well. What the fuck am I even watching? Who wrote this down and said ‘yeah, makes sense’?

Eventually, we get the OTHER big twist – that Charlotte and Lizzie had actually teamed up to beat Anton, tricking him into thinking HE had the upper hand!

Christ, this movie is full of twists. It’s like three different movies; a romance, a body horror film and then a rape revenge film. I’m not opposed to the genre switching, but the way the movie keeps on throwing twists in and then retconning everything before it makes this a very frustrating viewing. It's not clever if all you're doing is going "oh, yeah, that thing you thought happened? That didn't happen. I'm smart because my mom said so!" Just tell the fucking story!

But yeah – Charlotte and Lizzie team up and kill Anton, eventually severing all his limbs and making him watch them play the cello together. Just imagine clicking on this part as a random point in the movie after seeing the beginning with the two girls kissing and sleeping together. I know that’s not a hard hitting critique, but man is it funny to imagine.

Also, Charlotte apparently did all the stuff about cutting off Lizzie’s hand to save her from the brainwashing of the rape cult thing. I wonder if she EVER just tried talking to Lizzie calmly about it before pulling off that whole scheme. That would be my big problem if I was in Lizzie’s shoes. “Uh, you couldn’t have just talked to me about the brainwashing and the rape cult over our morning coffee? There was no point where you could’ve brought it up civilly? You had to jump straight to CUTTING OFF MY FUCKING HAND???”

But then, that’s our Charlotte – always such a cheeky rascal!

I just wonder why Charlotte had to do everything the way she did. Couldn't she just have killed Anton immediately at the beginning? That would have probably been easier. Or better yet, find some way to expose him or something. So much could've been avoided, including loss of limbs and PTSD-related trauma. But I guess it was more fun to do the whole hand-cutting-off, rape-revenge elaborate plot!

This movie is terribly bad, but I just find it more fascinating than anything. What brain mash thought this crazy shit up? I want to study it under a microscope and find out what secrets lie within. Maybe it could cure cancer.

Image copyright of its original owner; I don't own it.

The Hunt (2020)

Good satire is very hard to do, as this movie proves so well that it ought to be in the dictionary definition for how not to do it.

Director: Craig Zobel

Starring: Betty Gilpin, Hillary Swank

IMDb

You might know this from last fall when Trump and a bunch of other conservative weirdos saw the trailer for this movie and then got mad about that without even waiting to see it! Which, after I’ve now seen it, is hilarious, because it’s basically conservative satire playing right to their base and they didn’t understand it. That makes this at least a little funny.

This thing starts out with the subtlety of a nuclear warhead hitting your house, with a text conversation between a bunch of stereotypical liberal types talking about how they’d love to be at “the Manor” hunting “deplorables” right now. One guy says the president is a “ratfuck” and a lady says what he did “ruined her day.” Oh man, pause it, I need time to digest this mind-bending social commentary. It’s too smart!

Then a bunch of regular-seeming white people with southern and midwestern accents wake up in a field with gags in their mouths. They find a bunch of swords and guns and stuff in a giant box and take them, but this does not seem to help them even a little bit, as their opponents just throw grenades at them. That seems unfair as fuck. It’s like if you agreed to play badminton against someone and, instead, they just fucking threw grenades at you.

I do admit that the way the movie just kills off characters wantonly while implying they’ll be important is pretty funny… that at least adds a charming sort of grindhouse splatter to the whole thing. Too bad that can’t last all movie, since that would be weird and make no sense.

Instead, the REAL plot starts when a bunch of the idiots find a gas station where a mom and pop old people team is at the counter. One dude says he’s from Orlando, FL – the one guy with a basketball jersey and white-dude dreadlocks, of course he’s from my hometown. Fuck you, movie.

The old couple starts spewing a bunch of dialogue about gun rights, and then, after they kill the others – they’re part of the whole thing, oh man! – they get into an argument about whether it’s OK to say “black people” now while cleaning up the bodies. Get it, 'cause they're annoying liberals? The subtlety! It’s burning my eyes! I can’t see anymore and am now having to figure out how to apply for a service animal online!

The main girl turns out to be Betty Gilpin’s character Crystal, who is obviously the lead because she’s the only one not spewing generic conservative stuff about secret societies and libtard cucks and everything. She looks like she is about to cry for the entire film, which made sense after I saw where all this was going. She teams up with Ethan Suplee’s character Gary, who is some kind of Alex Jones style blogger.

There’s one scene where they come across a bunch of illegal immigrants who Gary suspects of being “crisis actors.” Just keep funneling those buzzwords into the script! It’s the cheapest way possible to show how political division is – this shit is like a Facebook comment thread between a bunch of 65 year olds just thrown haphazardly into a blender. Like yeah, just throw in every possible bottom of the barrel cliche. We don't get enough of that in real life. I want to hear about crisis actors and liberal cucks in a movie now, not just in the sewers of the internet. That's good dialogue!

There’s no real characters here for the most part; just strange Frankenstein’s monsters made up of cliches from the most obvious, groan-worthy parts of today's agonizing political discourse. I'm amazed Damon Lindelof wrote this after his quite good take on Watchmen last year. Is it some kind of yin-yang deal? Something about for every good thing you put into the world, there's something negative, too? Dude - you didn't have to do this.

There is some fun violence I guess. Crystal and this old farmer-looking guy get to the compound where all the bad guys are sitting around going “please don’t joke about that” - yes, really. Crystal makes incredibly short work of them all in an entertainingly bloody fashion that I am sure CPAC will make great use of as a ‘let’s get pumped up’ video.

Then we get the big twist that Hillary Swank is in the movie! Happy day! Oh, and also that apparently, the whole plot never existed before conservatives on the internet all started making conspiracy theories about how liberals take conservatives to a big manor and hunt them for sport. So then Swank’s character and the other villains, all high up businesspeople or something, make jokes about it through text and are fired. Then they all decide to make the conspiracy happen for real. They set up an elaborate murder hunt for no reason except that they were accused of it.

The final fight with Swank has her telling Crystal that “you all made it happen.” Which is about as lame of a justification as you can get. “We may have murdered a bunch of people, but you guys posted stuff we didn’t like on the internet.” Well when I think about it for a second, I guess that’s a good justification after all. The internet is life or death and if you can't have a fancy office job, you might as well become a mass murderer. I think that's what Rachel Maddow told me in my dreams.

Oh and also Crystal was apparently not the person they meant to pick for this – there was another lady with her name that they meant to kidnap, and THIS one is a trained badass martial artist. Seems like they should’ve noticed that when she was picking everyone on their side off like they were defenseless babies. But who am I to judge?

I guess the final fight is pretty OK, but how much of it is worth sitting through the rest of this awful steaming shit pile of a movie? I really don’t think it was worth it.

The problem with the twist in this movie is that it doesn’t change all of the stuff from before, which is essentially red meat conservative propaganda – the LIBRULZ are KILLING real AMERICANS! That’s shitty writing. You can argue that it’s all meant to be nonsense and satirical comedy, but the conservative characters, despite some outrageous lines, are shown to be polite, helpful and generally on the same team to help one another when the shit goes down. The liberal elites are just evil cartoons.

It’d actually be fun to lampoon the milquetoast liberals who are all superficial – but this isn’t the way to do it. Even aside from that, the writing is just dumb and dull and everything that happens is just perfunctory to move the plot along. It’s a hollow thing. But have fun paying 20 bucks to rent it on Amazon – what a great investment this has all been for me.

Images copyright of their original owners; I don't own any of them.

Wendigo (2001)

When I was maybe 13, I’d go to Blockbuster any chance I got. I’d browse the shelves for the evil-est looking horror flicks available. I didn’t give a single fuck. One of them was this movie. This was maybe the third or fourth horror flick I ever saw - back then I didn't get to see most of this whole genre until I was 12 or 13 and neither of my parents watched it, so I just discovered everything piecemeal and random, just whatever Blockbuster had. It was an interesting evolution. I'll show you why now.

Director: Larry Fessenden

Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Jake Weber

IMDb

This thing starts with a family of three hitting a deer on a snowy country road! Some bearded asshole tries to get in their face because HE was gonna fuck that deer ahead of them!! Oops, did I say that last thing out loud? I ought to be more sensitive about that stuff.

They get to an old country house where the dad just exercises his own weird stereotypes, talking endlessly to his wife about how that dude on the road was such a rude piece of shit. Dude, get over it! You’re not handling it well. There’s a whole trippy psychedelic dream sequence with the son, too, mostly just looks like the camera guy took mushrooms and then left the camera on!

Some weird old man at a gas station hands the kid a totemic stone figure of the Wendigo, which is a kind of mythical figure that has apparently infused itself into strange toys at gas stations! What a world! In 100 years some idiot kid is gonna find a statue of Ronald McDonald and that will awaken an even worse murderous idol spirit to come and wreak vengeance. And I’ll be here for it, because by then I am guessing none of us will have a choice in this fucking capitalist hellscape we’ve created.

By the way, the old man apparently may not have actually existed as the manager says nobody else works there! Weird! The gas station clerk reacts to this news of a mysterious man pretending to work there with all the surprise of a catatonic zombie. Who can blame the girl? She probably makes $6 an hour and gets spit on by weirdos all day. Woohoo, America!

At some point, despite the father’s objections, the movie continues on. The movie jumps over several hurdles of wasting time. This shit could get an Olympic medal with all the scenes of this family doing fucking nothing. I have to say the production value is something – I’m not gonna grab the low-hanging fruit and bash this movie for it, but some of these low-budget productions just fascinate me. I mean, the camera shakes like a tornado victim is holding it, the actors act like they have guns to their head and the picture quality is so bad that you wonder if they didn’t just hold a piece of greasy plastic film over the lens on a dare. But it’s all part of the charm. This feels like it was made by people with no money who just left the camera on while people just did whatever on set. I dig the authenticity.

The bad guy is conveyed via sticks from the forest waving in your face, like it’s a game you played when you were a nine-year-old. Most of the action shots are so dark you’ll swear the light guy was off fucking the secretary from the studio. But hey! That’s what horror was back then! Real horror has no production values and feels like maybe, it might’ve been made out of some weird fetish! That’s what it is!

Somehow, during an expedition in the woods, amid all the movie’s weird trippy dark psychedelia, the dad gets shot. I don’t even know if they had the budget for that effect, given everything else. Was he really shot? Were the makers of this film that sadistic? Even if so, I respect them. We all have to make sacrifices for our art, and some of us have to do it for straight to DVD blockbuster picks that only bored stoners end up seeing, which end up on specialty horror streaming sites 20 years later.

God, how long does it take to get him to the hospital? Don’t you know we can piece it together and fill in the blanks in our heads? We don’t exactly need to see every bathroom break these idiots take. It’s not some kind of fucking Richard Linklater biopic with a progressive theme and a whole concept to spend 20 years behind the filming. Nobody is gonna be lost if you skip a few steps and just show us the dude in a damn hospital bed!

They have a whole sequence where they don’t know if the dad was shot – then you can see a bullet hole right there in his gut. These damn doctors graduated from Mr. Magoo’s University for the Somewhat Well-Sighted. Oh my god, has medical knowledge failed us here in Bum Fuck Nowhere? My god.

The redneck dude from earlier in the movie turns out to be the one who shot the dad. His karma comes because the little boy’s Wendigo statue wants revenge. In a bizarrely shot shaky camera sequence of the forest, the trees like they’re seizure patients, the dude ends up dying. He fires his gun a few times. We get a brief, hazy glimpse of the monster – a naked person with a deer head. I’m sure this was a dejected extra from Eyes Wide Shut that just wandered onto the wrong set; don’t get fucking overreacting about it...

Honestly, I didn't mind this that much. My film education is a thousandfold what it was when I saw this last. But there's a charm to the total DIY factor here, with everything the movie did so bizarrely but while trying to craft a certain atmosphere. They had an idea here. It wouldn't be as creepy without the low-fi production. It's not great and spends too much time waffling around, but I can't say it's the worst I've ever seen.

All in all the Wendigo is my favorite Marvel Universe character and I can’t wait for the long-anticipated sequel that will surely be inspired by this whole coronavirus thing going on. They do have a lot of time to spend indoors. Better get on it.

Image copyright of its original owners; I don't own it.

The Platform (2020)

The Platform is a Spanish horror comedy about a strange prison concept where food is distributed via a system where a giant platform (name drop!) lowers through hundreds of levels and people are supposed to be fair. Unfortunately, people are selfish! There. That’s the entire fucking movie. But they milked it for like an hour and a half, so I guess I have to review it.

Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

Starring: Ivan Massagué, Antonia San Juan

IMDb

Co-written with Tony and Michelle.

This guy Goreng, the main character, apparently agreed to be part of this, as apparently it’s one way to get a degree. How does that work? Is there a university that’s like ‘well, you can take classes and educate yourself and prove you’re worthy, OR you can go be in jail in a filthy hole for a while!’ How does that make any fucking sense?

The main dude wakes up with some crazy old man. There are some scenes of them doing naked yoga together (???) and reading and bickering and whatnot – it’s all a big waste of time to eat up screentime.

The main meat of the film for the first act, the idea that this platform brings food down every day and they’re supposed to ration it out – but of course, human greed gets in the way and nobody does it that way. Every man for himself, etc. I’m not sure who’s benefiting from this. Is it a science experiment? If so, it’s gone on long enough, I am almost positive. Is it just the cruelty of an uncaring barbaric system? Nice social commentary I guess. But we got over an hour of movie left and I already get the idea! Uh oh!

The old dude ties Goreng up and tries to eat him. Wow – they went straight from honeymoon marriage right into the homicidal phase. They don’t waste time. The old dude reassures Goreng he won’t eat his genitals – well, that’s nice of him.

Where is security during this? And was it worth the degree yet??? I HAVE TO KNOW! But then a crazy lady, I suppose the physical manifestation of Deus ex Machina, comes and murders the old dude just in time. What a convenience.

Then Goreng gets stuck with this other lady who has a dog, who I guess was the administrator for this place who let him in in the first place? Why is she there? I have no idea and the movie doesn’t seem to care. Character development is never really a concern here. They don’t really explain anybody’s motives. This lady is mostly there for exposition we couldn’t get elsewhere, basically spoonfeeding the audience the whole plot about how the prisoners are supposed to ration out food and there should be enough for everyone if they do. We get it! The blinking garish neon sign of your “smart social commentary” is starting to hurt my eyes!

In between all of this, the ghost of the old man returns to haunt Goreng and, mostly, waste more screen time. 98% of the reason for this is wasting time!

I guess some type of a plot finally starts up as the lady and Goreng hatch a plot to try and regulate everything to help everyone eat. The lady just tries to ask nicely, but unfortunately, the kinds of people who exist in a prison like this don’t respond to asking nicely. Goreng then threatens to shit in their food if they don’t listen. Finally, character development! He doesn’t ever shit in the food that we see, though. That’s a shame as it would have made this movie better to me at least a little.

They spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to make this happen and it doesn’t work, so the lady ends up hanging herself, with the intention of letting Goreng eat her. This leads to more hallucinations of the old dude telling him to eat her. The old dude’s ghost also says he was more polite because he didn’t just stab anyone to death – instead he was nice about his homicide attempts. Man, I don’t know, I guess this word vomit is supposed to be a ‘moral gray area’ type of character thing for Goreng. It doesn’t work at all and is stupid as shit! Good job!

I guess then he ends up with this other guy who is sort of manic and crazy, trying to climb up each level to get to the hole. Goreng and this guy team up to make a ‘statement’ to the administration of this prison by stopping anyone from eating the food. This is actually a little bit of an interesting plot, which I assume is why they made us wait an hour before getting to it – because the writer/director/etc are sadistic fucks and want us to experience the movie the same way the characters do, starved for anything of substance.

So then we get a few somewhat OK moments as Goreng and the guy try and stop anyone from eating in order to save food for the lowest levels and ‘make a statement’ - I’m not sure if both of those are the same goal, or if one contradicts the other; it’s not that clear. There are a few bloody ass fight scenes that are kinda entertaining, if exploitative and goofy. And at least Goreng finally has a fucking goal here. Imagine that – a character who wants something! It’s like finding an oasis after dying of thirst in a desert in this fucking movie.

They find a small child on one of the levels and end up saving her rather than finishing their mission. I guess children weren’t allowed in here which is why this is shocking. But as we’ve seen, this prison doesn’t care if inmates cannibalize each other or hang themselves! So it’s just whatever. They decide they’re fucked anyway and just stay down there, instead letting the little girl ride up on the platform, deciding SHE is now the ‘statement’ to the administration! Ooohhh!

...Nah, they’ll probably just give her to an orphanage and keep doing things the way they always did. Or was that cynicism and pointlessness the ‘message’ all along? If so, fuck this shit anyway.

No world-building to help us contextualize anything, and I hated all these characters actively throughout the movie. I sure hope ole Goreng felt good about his choices to do this to get a degree. Don’t watch this shit, man. This movie sucks and I'd prefer getting the coronavirus to watching this, which I'll regret writing if I do end up getting the virus.

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