The feeling that I get twenty minutes into a horror movie should be, “Where is this going to go next?” not “When are they going to screw this up?” But alas, this is 2021, when mumblecore horror and overpraised elevated nonsense and A24 movies with great trailers and horrible full-length stories are the norm. So yeah, twenty minutes into The Dark and the Wicked and I was getting the answer to that question.

Bryan Bertino made The Strangers and wrote the not-as-good sequel, as well as movies like Mockinbird and The Monster. This time, he’s gone back to his family’s farmhouse to tell the story of what happens when your mother tells you that you should never come back home.

The first fifteen minutes of this movie hit home in a way that few movies have in some time. Over the last year, my mother has had to care for my father, a man who is totally there one day and then gone mentally for days at a time. It’s not as horrible as this movie, where the father is slowly dying and the mother is the only one there, calling her children back home to let them see him before he dies.

Then, you know, the dad shows up as a demon to scare the daughter while she’s in the shower and the effect is really, really bad and then you realize that no matter how well art directed the beginning of this movie is, how great the trailer is and how cool the poster is art designed, this movie is going to be the same possession tropes that we’ve seen before.

Which is a shame, because the darkness of the opening is brutal. It is everything that loss feels like. I have no idea how you keep a movie going with that level of pure bleakness, but this movie does not do that.

Instead, it becomes a movie where I continually look at the time to see how much is left of it, which I hate, because I was with this movie and wanted so much more than a floating mom outside and a preacher who calls to mind Reverend Kane, which is not the intention but at this point, I started thinking of movies that really scared me.

Elevated horror wants to mean so much more than just being frightening. Cool story. And I want these movies to be successful. But you know, there have been movies that take horrifying moments out of real life, like Rosemary’s Baby and childbirth, Don’t Look Now and the loss of a child, The Shining and the pains of being a parent (and selfishly for me, the fact that no one understands just how hard it is to be a writer when everyone keeps bothering you) and, well, I could go on. What films like this, The Babadook and yeah every Ari Aster movie gets wrong is that you can make a movie about those moments and still be frightening.

Eh, I’m probably just being a jerk by comparing three of the best horror movies ever against movies that can barely get noticed outside of film twitter geeks who just want to have something that can belong to them. You have to feel for that kind of spirit, I guess.

You can still think these are bad movies.

But don’t make the mistakes I did. When you see that cool poster or DVD cover, when you watch that trailer, when you see the cool look that this starts with, maybe you can beat the disappointment of this unlike me.

I’m back on my bullshit, my Nicolas Cage bullshit that is. It’s been about 2 months since I’ve watched a single movie starring Nic Cage but today I sat down with the newly released Willy’s Wonderland. It’s one I have been looking forward to for a while and I’m glad I finally get to watch it.

Willy’s Wonderland stars Nicolas Cage as a mute drifter with a sick ass ride and a penchant for caffeine who is saddled with the task of cleaning up the defunct party restaurant for children which the movie gets its name from, Willy’s Wonderland. Willy’s Wonderland is populated by killer animatronics possessed by the souls of demented serial killers. He is given this task by Tex Macadoo, the owner of the restaurant who promises to pay his debt to the local tow truck driver/mechanic when Cage’s character’s car is brought down by a spike strip right outside the shit hole town known as Hayesville. 

This film is 90 minutes of Cage being a badass and eviscerating killer animatronics pausing only when it’s break time to pound soda and play pinball. I wasn’t expecting Cage to be completely without lines the entirety of the film but its made pretty clear near the beginning that the drifter he plays is a man of few words. What I’m most impressed with by this movie is Cage’s ability to bring this character to life. This is a side of Cage that feels familiar but not at the same time. I cannot quite put my finger on what it is that made me love his performance in this film. It has that tinge of Cage induced insanity but it feels restrained since that insanity is not accompanied by Cage wildly gesticulating while doing crazy things such as smashing in an animatronic ostrich’s head in or dealing with teens who are hell bent on helping him escape what they think will be his certain death. It also happens to be great fun to see him fight the animatronics

There are plenty of other characters in this film, including the garbage people that are the sheriff, Tex, and tow truck driver as well as some teens who have the misfortune to live in a town that’s famous for serial killers who killed themselves to transfer their energy into animatronics at the kiddie restaurant but my main reason for seeing this film was Nicolas Cage. 

If you want a film that is filled with animatronics killing people you are sure to enjoy this film. I felt the atmosphere of the defunct restaurant along with the cheesy lyrics of the songs the animatronics sing brought a kind of kitschy spookiness that one may remember if they’ve ever been to Showbiz Pizza Place to its extreme conclusion. Honestly, it is just a whole lotta fun. You can check it out via Theater at Home from most popular streaming services such as Vudu, Amazon Video, Apple, Microsoft, etc.

Be sure to partake of our Nic Cage fandom with our “Nic Cage Bitch” feature as we burned through more of his films — and give you quick reference list of all of his films we’ve reviewed at the site.

Seven years after The Invisible Man Appears, Daiei released this sequel which begins with a series of murders that seem to be the work of an invisible man. However, there seems to be the sound of buzzing with each kill.

It’s the work of a war criminal who created the formula and as a result, was left stranded on the island where his lab was. Now, he’s killing each of his associates in their new lives with the help of his brutal assistant, who is now addicted to the formula that allows him to become a human fly.

Now that scientists have made the invisible formula safe for humans, can a brave soul — or two — use it to protect the world from the Human Fly, who is now leaving bombs on trains and killing hundreds of people at a time?

At one point, this was going to be released in the U.S. as The Murdering Mite. It was never released, however.

How awesome is it that this movie basically has two Vincent Price characters, the Invisible Man and the Fly, fighting against one another? Seriously, the little fly man is super sinister and awesome in every scene, making this movie for me.

You can get this with The Invisible Man Appears on a new double blu ray from Arrow Video.

Dennis Dugan is known for the movies he’s directed for Adam Sandler, including Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Grown Ups, Just Go with It, Jack and Jill and Grown Ups 2, which has made him a four-time Golden Raspberry Worst Director nominee. He also made Problem Child, Brain Donors, Beverly Hills Ninja and several other films that critics abhorred. Another of Dugan’s Sandler films, one that we reviewed, is Just Go with It. As an actor, Dugan appeared in everything, from The Girl Most Likely To… (1973) to The Howling (1980). He even had his own, short-lived TV series, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, which spun off the more popular, long-running The Rockford Files starring James Gardner.

Dugan conceived the story with Eileen Conn and Larry Miller, while directing from his own screenplay. And what we get is, well, it’s one of those romantic comedies that have plotlines that intersect like Crash and not the one with Elias Koteas leading a cult of car crash sex lovers.

It’s interesting to me that if this movie was only about the relationship between the perfectionist chef played by Jeremy Irons and the blind photographer well-acted by Diane Keaton, this would have been a movie that people talked about. Instead, that story is just one thread in a much larger fabric that really doesn’t add up.

Also, this movie has more people tripping over furniture than any movie you will ever see. So many people trip over furniture that I was waiting for Dick Van Dyke to show up and fall over a chesterfield sofa.

I thought that with the death of Garry Marshall, we’d see the end of this kind of movie, a romcom that unites a cast of many to tell a story that brings them together and wraps up with everyone happy. God does not play dice, so all these coincidences in the story have to make sense. That said, She does allow movies like this to be made, I guess.

Some of the actors appearing in this are JinJoo Lee from the band DNCE, Jesse McCartney from Dream Street, German actress Veronica Ferres, Maggie Grace from Lost as the wedding planner around who this film revolves, internet creator King Bach, Rob Schneider’s daughter Elle King (this movie has a propensity of musicians as actors), musician Keaton Simons (who in addition to being a musician is the stepson of Eric Roberts), Melinda Hill, Richard Kline (Larry from Three’s Company) and Dugan himself as a game show host.

That said, I’m sure there’s an audience for this, someone that wants a big silly movie to get them through the loneliness of quarantine. The idea of someone who trashed a wedding becoming the person in charge of an important wedding is a good one. And who knows? You may love this. I kind of respected its commitment to being as loud as possible, as well as, like I said, a movie where people continually crash into one another and careen over all manner of armchairs and other examples of furniture.

Love, Wedding & Other Disasters has just been released on blu ray. It’s been streaming for some time, so there are many places where you can watch it. We were generously given a copy to review and obviously, the gift of free movies has not lured me into just giving away good reviews.

Man, I feel like I should say something nice, beyond the fact that I really liked the late age romance between Irons and Keaton. Hmm. Alright. Maggie Grave is beyond gorgeous in this with blonde hair. Also, I kind of liked the brother of the groom who is chained to an exotic dancer throughout the movie, all for opportunity to win a reality show.