The Hollow (2015)

I am aware that Cinema Freaks hasn't been active as of late. This was due to the 2016 election and a hurricane, and no, I don't feel like elaborating on those things much. It isn't fun. Let's instead talk about something slightly less depressing – like this depressingly drab, cliché pile of shit The Hollow. 

Actually, never mind; I regret picking it for a review or doing this at all.

Director: Sheldon Wilson

Starring: Stephanie Hunt, Sarah Dugdale

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is a made for TV movie, which I believe doesn't have to be a bad thing. But stuff this poorly written and put together isn't doing the genre many favors!

We start off with a woman and her dog that won't shut up driving in a car. They stop by some area in the trees and what looks like a firework explodes in the lady's face. If that seems weird and nonsensical to you, well, then you haven't seen as many bad horror movies as me. All of them have stupid shit like this in them.

This was the 'too gory' version of the anti-fireworks PSA your demented neighborhood council wanted to put out. The sadists...

Then we cut to something totally different and unique – a group of OTHER people driving in a car, in the same boring foresty road setting! Wow. These three are a group of sisters, I guess, whose parents have recently died in a car fire. We know this because of the extremely forced, awkward exposition they engage in. It's seriously really shitty writing – like the one girl, Marley, goes “You KNOW she's been traumatized ever since our parents burned to death in that car!”

Oh, really??? Well thank you for telling me that! Sure am glad you reminded me! I almost forgot!!

There are a bunch of really fucking terrible jump scares in this, too – like, when the two older sisters are looking for Emma, the youngest one, after she ran off into the forest randomly for no reason, a bird scares Sarah and then this guy comes out from behind a tree:

"I know I look like Brock Turner and I'm cornering young girls in the woods alone, but I promise, I'm the good guy..."

Wow! Two jump scares for the price of one! But yeah, this guy's purpose is warning her of going to this town on the island they're all traveling to, saying something bad might happen there. Heavens, me – something BAD happening in this HORROR MOVIE? Say it ain't so! Prep the bomb shelters! I never thought something bad would happen in a movie with a giant tree-fire monster on the cover!

The little girl, Emma, is apparently psychic or something – she has dreams that sort of foretell the future, and has recently had one where all three of them die. Well with THAT attitude... but seriously, though, they never even bother trying to explain what the deal is with these powers. It barely ever comes up again. There's honestly no point in it except to have some weak foreshadowing to what's going to come later. I would have forgotten about it if we hadn't expected it to be a main part of the plot, and then it just... wasn't.

They get to the island, where they're going to live with their aunt after their parents died in that accident that they clearly don't care about, as they don't bring it up ever again.

However, when they get there, they find the island completely abandoned, which is weird, but doesn't seem to ring any strange bells for the girls. I get the feeling these three together had maybe a 75 IQ score. But what's weirder is they get to their aunt's house and find her dead inside her car! Oh man, just another classic good time at auntie's house.

Almost as good as The Visit by M. Night Shyamalan for twisty-turny stories about visiting relatives!

They go through an extremely confusing segment next in which they help this wounded lady into the house who's been attacked by the monster from the beginning. Inside, a storm hits and the two older sisters, Marley and Sarah, argue about how Sarah won't let her do anything. This is really boring, so I don't care about expounding any further – but I will say Marley, played by Sarah Dugdale, constantly looks like she's on drugs through this whole thing:

Are you cosplaying as Midget Elvira this year for Halloween?

Seriously, somebody on set needs to get her into a detox program and keep any needles or pill bottles away from her.

I don't get why their cell phones don't work. I mean, sure, out in the country, maybe. But once they get to the main part of town, it makes no sense unless this is some weird Amish coven with no cell towers. They should be able to just call that guy at the pier on the mainland and get him to send help – and then boom, movie over. But I guess there is a God and he hates us, so that doesn't happen and the movie continues.

They eventually get into town, though, and they split up somehow. Marley finds this shop where the monster kills a guy in front of her, throwing his body on top of her. He doesn't touch her though, or Emma who was standing BEHIND them inside the store the whole time. This is sadly one of the movie's most annoyingly bad elements – the monster constantly has a chance to kill them all very easily but doesn't do it because... uh, I got nothing. Because it... doesn't want to?

"Nah... I got a lot of chores to do today! See ya!"

Later on, they find another group of people hiding in this store, and the monster doesn't even kill them THEN. There's no reason why it can't just burst through the door and instantly kill them! The rest of the fucking island is deserted and dead at this point, so I guess the monster is just off downloading bootlegged Game of Thrones episodes in-between maimings and murders.

If you really give a fuck, here is the backstory we get – some witches were killed in this town a hundred years ago, and now a monster exists because of that and will come back every hundred years for no fucking reason and kill people again. Really? That's the best you could think of? If I turned that into a third grade writing homework assignment, my teacher would flunk me out of the class. You should be ashamed.

I love the fact that these witches cast a spell to 'come back' from the dead as something far worse, and the monster in this movie is the best they could get - a shitty bundle of sticks with a flaming head that moves like a drunk praying mantis. Girls, I think somebody at the magic shop ripped you off.

Also, that guy with a gun from earlier in the movie, who warned them about the island? He's apparently some kind of internet writer who doesn't even believe in the legend of the island, and is just going there to be a cynical ass about it. Because why have any aspect of this plot make any sense, right? If he didn't believe in the legend, why did he tell them it was so serious?

So, honestly, this is the point of the movie where it really fell off a cliff for us. There's nothing wrong with a slow-building plot, which we figured this might be. But nope! It just had no plot, period! Everything we thought was going to be revealed was completely off-base, because the movie just ignored any kind of plot threads and turned into a generic chase scene. I'll give you some of our guesses that turned out to be complete moot points:

-Was the monster not killing the three sisters because they were all important for some reason? Like, were they reincarnations of these three witches that got killed there years ago, or something? NOPE!

-Were the other people they ran into in town going to be evil and conspiring against them or lying to them in some way? NOPE!

-Was the monster dragging off certain bodies for some ultimate endgame that we couldn't guess? Nope, just for no reason at all!

It's just awfully, confusingly bad plotting. How can so little actually happen? Don't you have any sense of drama?

What DOES happen is about 20 minutes of really, really boring running around in a forest from the monster, with most of the characters having to limp now after being injured – because not being able to run properly just makes action that much more exciting, remember. The monster sure does show its face a lot! What a narcissistic, full-of-himself piece of shit.

"My mother always told me I looked like Cary Grant!"

They end up down in an old bunker, because when in doubt, make it harder for yourselves to escape – brilliant plan, General Patton's spawn! They mostly do nothing of consequence there, just more hiding from the monster. Sarah locks herself in this room with the monster, intending to trap it there, and it kills her – a noble sacrifice, for sure. But why didn't she just lock the monster in and save herself? My theory is that she just wanted to end it all now and get out of the misery that is this fucking movie.

"Finally, the sweet embrace of death! Woohoo!"

Then they go outside and the monster follows them, nearly killing Marley before a burst of sunlight through the trees kills the monster instead, because this thing is such a pussy piece of shit monster, sunlight kills it. And not in a cool way like with vampires, either.

But wait a second. Didn't the movie establish that this monster comes back every hundred years? It leaves at the end of Halloween, they said, and doesn't come back for 100 years. So basically nothing they even did mattered! That's bullshit. And this movie is bullshit.

I don't even know what else to add. Bad storyline, with nothing explained or elaborated on, and a bunch of dumb moments where the monster could've killed them but didn't for no reason. Lots of lazy jump scares. No good characters or drama at all, and even though they try early on, they drop it later on and never bring it up again. How much more do you need?

Nothing about this was entertaining at all. Like I said, this wasn't even a good choice for a Cinema Freaks review, and I am sorry I did it. If I had a physical copy of this movie, I'd put it in the Trick or Treat bags of whichever kid annoyed me the most on Halloween night.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

The Lords of Salem (2012)

Plots are actually kind of overrated. Hell, why bother having one at all when you can just have weird images and lots of screaming? For a horror director, this is almost essential now, as we all know the best plots were either used in the past or stolen from our minds by alien probes. Those are really the only two options, so it's better not to even try. So who else can save us from this plight but Rob Zombie? I mean, if you can't trust movies made by the equivalent of your high school bully who used to shove your head in a toilet, you can't trust anybody, man.

Director: Rob Zombie

Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips

IMDb

Co-written with The Observer and Michelle.

This was the last Rob Zombie film as of this writing, and no one really saw it because who would, after seeing the Halloween remakes he did? As much as I hate to admit it though, this is a better movie than either of those remakes, even if only by a little bit. But that won't stop me from making fun of it!

We start this off with a bunch of witches in the 1600s screaming and cackling, because when Tumblr hasn't been invented yet, I guess you gotta entertain yourself somehow.

"Look at my hands! They're somehow the only part of my body that's clean!"

This goes on for waaaay too long, but fortunately after that we get introduced to our main character, Sheri Moon Zombie.

Literally the first shot you see of her; I am not kidding.

Boy, he really isn't wasting time, is he? Two Rob Zombie cliches in the first five minutes – his wife, and his wife's naked ass.

She's playing Heidi, a radio DJ who has a dog, I guess. That's about the extent of her character. I guess the story is that she sees a weird figure across the hall from her at the apartment she thought was abandoned – what? A character in a horror movie sees something that might be just in her mind? Stop the presses!

But what is the dialogue like? Will it be a flurry of swearing like in every other movie he's done? Well, the first human interaction is with the old lady landlord who Heidi asks about the figure she saw in the other apartment. The landlord responds no, there's no one in there, but she's just glad she got rid of the last tenant who lived there, who “was a dog,” she says. Then she reaches down and pats Heidi's dog and says “no offense,” you know, just to make sure she isn't stepping on any toes.

"Rrruuuffff! Too late! Offense taken!"

Well, I'm convinced. Heidi goes to work and hangs out with another Ken Foree role and this other guy, who I'm pretty sure is getting ready to join ISIS. Even if he isn't, though, I'm positive he can't get through airport security quick enough to catch his flight.

These three are apparently a bunch of radio hosts who do silly things like play sound effects and have conversations with each other! Oh wait...those are normal things radio hosts do. Well, shit. I guess they get a strange vinyl record in the mail for Heidi, which turns out to be this weird noise that makes Heidi uncomfortable to listen to.

But that isn't a big deal for now. For now it's time for Heidi and Mr. Beardo over there to hang out at her house and re-enact scenes you've seen in every indie comedy flick:

Oh yeah, dance party in a horror movie! That sets the mood.

And it may look like she's cooking something, but don't be fooled – she's just swirling that beige-colored slop around to give the appearance of cooking.

The next night she comes home and winds up hanging out with her landlord's sisters, one of whom is a palm reader who I'm sure will be living in a shitty motel working at a Circle K in a year...I mean, she flat out says most of the lines on Heidi's palm don't mean anything to her and she only looks at one of them. Isn't that like being a math teacher and refusing to teach anything above sixth-grade-level multiplication? Somehow I don't think there are thick enough cloaks and mirrors in the world to hide that much bullshit. She tells Heidi to get in touch with her dark, sexual side or some bullshit like that.

Yes, get in touch with your dark, sexual side - palm reading psychics are kind of like issues of Cosmo after all.

I also love the landlord's exasperated cry of “you need to stop overdoing that psychic act; it's annoying!” after Heidi leaves. Yeah, I guess annoying would be one word to describe it. Maybe they should hire this lady to be casting director for Rob Zombie's other movies. She could just sit there and call every other performer in House of 1,000 Corpses annoying. And in Halloween II she could probably just kill Rob Zombie and improve the movie.

On the show, they interview an old man who's written a book about witches. They ask him if there were any “real witches,” sort of as a joke, and he answers, very deadpan, that there are no such things as real witches.

"There's also no such thing as the Easter bunny."

Wellp, that settles that! Movie over.

Later on, Heidi has a very surreal nightmare in which she goes into the room from Se7en and finds this:

Man, the previous tennants left half a can of butter, a roll of toilet paper and their giant glowering angry red cross. How inconsiderate.

Riveting. Then outside, in a hallway that already looks like it's out of The Shining, she runs into a grimy, naked old lady who looks like she also belongs in The Shining.

Bah, she's just part of the nudist convention going through town at the time. No biggie!

Then Heidi goes to a church the next day, intending to have a quiet and reflective day with her neglected ole' buddy J.C., but the priest shows up and starts talking to her instead. How is it in these movies that there's always a priest hanging around an empty church even when there's nothing going on? Don't they ever do anything else? Do they go out to buy groceries and chain-link-fence the church up until they get back?

"Why are you in here at any random time the protagonist in these movies come into a church?"
"Simple, my child - I am bound by blood to stay in this church forever."
"..."
"Yes, it's really quite horrific and depressing."

Anyway, conversation with the priest turns into a rape scene, which is such low-hanging fruit I could probably grab it from here in stupid old Florida, but I'm not going to.

Use your imagination...

After that, it's time for exposition, with that old man who they had on their radio show, who is suspicious of things going on because the script needs someone to investigate witches and shit like that. How do you think this went in the writers' room?

“Rob, I know you wanted this to be nothing but psychedelic brain-fucking imagery, but I really can't even tell what's going on, and I'm supposed to be the scriptwriter! I think we need to shoehorn in some kind of exposition-y plot device!”

“I think it's good the way it is. I always wanted to make a movie with nothing but naked witches and images I saw while half-dead in a drugged stupor. I'm fulfilling my dream!”

“Yeah, but we already hired Bruce Davison for the role! That'd be a lot of wasted money otherwise.”

“...alright, throw in some really generic scenes where he discovers stuff about the witches in the past being related to Heidi. That ought to be good enough, right?”

“Eh, sure. Why not?”

The problem with this, of course, was the obvious – the conversation just took place between Zombie and the drunken ghost of what remains of his own conscience. He was just sitting in an empty room talking to himself there.

After that shit is over and you're falling asleep, we get scenes of Heidi getting sicker and sicker and going home to get pushed around in a wheelchair by the three witch sisters who run the place.

Now they can skip the lines at Disney.

They take her back to that creepy Se7en-style room, only this time it's actually the palace Versailles, apparently. Heidi somehow has corpse paint on like she's in the worst ICP cover band in the world, and gives a double-handjob, I guess, to the appendages of a Cthulhu-like monster which we never really see.

That's the same face the entire audience has after watching the rest of the movie, too!

Apparently, this is her tipping point into madness, as she then spends all her time half-asleep on the couch, unable to move. Oh please, this is just what people do after a bad breakup. I'm not impressed. It would be more intimidating if she just reverted to her past life and started making women slap each other for the chance to go to the bathroom.

That bearded dude calls a few times, and has a sort of incoherent conversation with Heidi about their sort-of romance going on, which might be compelling if we really knew anything about either character. But I guess that wasn't the important part of the film.

We also get this scene, where Mr. Exposition Man comes over to try and figure out what's going on. He was smart enough to find out Heidi was related to the witches from the past, but apparently his Sherlock Holmes powers ran out there, as he doesn't seem to have a clue that the three old ladies are the bad guys here. "I mean, they act about as subtle as a clown wielding a machete, but fuck, I was totally surprised!"

Is it any surprise that they kill him afterward? Oh, and they don't do it with magic witch powers or anything cool like that. They just beat him to death with a frying pan, and no, I am not joking.

"Why did we put that cloth over his face anyway? It's not like anyone's going to come in here right this moment. I mean it's a movie - that would never happen."
"Sssshhhh...."

Oh well. Farewell character we won't ever remember the name of!

Beard-O takes Heidi out to this concert of the “Lords of Salem” band, who we never really see. Or we do see something, if watching a drug-fucked psychedelic orgy on screen counts as actually watching a band play. Seriously, I think some of these images are what hardcore right-wing Christians think the rest of us are doing on weekends.

It's cool to act like you're riding a bucking bronco when you're really just sitting on a goat who doesn't care.

Boy, Gene Simmons is hard up for cash these days.

Worst Eyes Wide Shut party ever.

There are also some more scenes of fire and naked witches and babies covered in blood and all kinds of shit. Then we see Heidi can really rock those white contact lenses they sell at the Halloween discount costume store. And that's just kinda the end of the movie. Hooray?

"Oh yeah, raided the $1 bin at K-Mart, now we're ready to trick or treat!"

Oh, well we do get a few "flashback" style scenes with her playing with the dog.

Now I see the point: the dog was the main character of the movie all along!

This was...well, better than most of Zombie's other movies. It at least tried some new things here and there, and it did show that he can write other things than rednecks and people screaming at each other, or Venn diagrams of the two things overlapping. This at least tried to set up a bit of character and atmosphere, and I did like the lightning, colors and visuals of it all – it was a very nice looking film full of spooky Halloween-esque ambiance, so that was fun.

The problem was that it just wasn't really a movie so much as a collection of cool looking images. It was kind of like a scrapbook of images from the mind of a character from a Dario Argento film. Zombie was definitely going for that vibe here – that super old school, retro vibe trying to imitate Suspiria, Inferno or any number of Lucio Fulci flicks, as well as The Shining for that matter. But it just didn't have any kind of real story to it. Everything that happened just felt incidental – like, oh, really, Heidi was a descendant of these witches and somehow never moved away from Salem for all these years? And she just so happened to be in the right places (the radio station, her apartment with the witches as landlords) for all this weird shit to happen to her? Well, what a small world after all!

The movie ends before we really get any sense of purpose behind what happened. There isn't really enough meat on the bones of this story to carry it beyond “curious” to actually good...the Fulci and Argento flicks, despite being similarly fever-dream-induced like this, at least had a sense of flow and narrative to them, and characters that kinda moved the story along. Here, once Heidi gets under the spell of these witches, or whatever it is that happens to her, the story stops cold and it just starts being about creepy imagery rather than a creepy story. That's the real difference here. For a similar but better modern horror movie, I'd really recommend House of the Devil.

But eh, at least this would probably be good if you watched it while high off your ass. Which is the real barometer for quality of any movie, when you think about it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.