Venture capitalist Joel is dealing with the end of his last company. He’s had to be the scapegoat for the lies that his partner told and his name is known nationwide as a swindler. He and his actress wife Jessica have to start over from the bottom — living with her parents. But when Joel’s life is at his lowest, he discovers that he may be able to reinvent himself.
Written by Mark Leidner and directed by Yedidya Gorsetman, this black and white tale of virtual reality gone wrong surprised me with how deep and brutal it could be.
When Joel meets old friend Nicolaus and his business partner Lester, he learns about Empathy, Inc.’s product – Xtreme Virtual Reality. It takes its users and allows them to be inside the lives of the poor and homeless. But the truth is, they’re actually taking over the lives of real people and the choices they make have deadly results.
The line where one of the villains says, “It’s the best feeling ever to CENSOR yourself?” That’s crazy but brilliant writing. This raises some big ideas and delivers on them. I’ve never seen a body switch movie before where that happens.
Empathy Inc. will be released in theaters on September 13 and VOD September 24.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company, but that no bearing on our review.
After being thrown out of his home by his wife, Mark finds himself back at a place he knew in his childhood called Dumpling Farm. His old friend Ian, who never left, is possessed by a group demonic, flesh-eating witches, who now want to trap and devour Mark.
The debut feature for the Pickering brothers, this film was originally titled The Witches of Dumpling Farm. If I’ve learned anything from my years of watching movies, it’s don’t do drugs in the woods with witches. I say this, and I’ve put myself in real life situations like the characters in the film. Luckily, I survived to tell you about it.
There’s not a ton of story here or even anyone likable to get behind and the witches have unexplained motivations, other than they like to trap and eat men. There are some decent effects, though and some really nice shots, such as the highway of parked cars that stretches far and wide.
I will say that this feature looks better than most of the streaming horror choices that you’ll find. There’s definitely some talent behind the lens and it will be interesting to see where the Pickerings take their talent next.
After playing theaters in ten cities, Three Witches is now available DVD and on demand.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this this film by its PR team, but that has no bearing on our review.
After a devastating family tragedy — my copy still doesn’t have the VFX done but I can assume it must have been pretty awful — Father Jones loses his faith and moves to China, as you do. A dying woman gives him a dragon tooth and soon, he learns that he can transform into a raptor. At first, he’s horrified by his newfound superpower, but a local prostitute convinces him to use his newfound gift to fight ninjas.
If you don’t want to watch this movie after that first paragraph, you may want to rethink coming to our site. This is a $35,000 epic begging for you to devour it.
When he comes back to America, he saves a prostitute named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski) from some muggers by tearing them apart. They make love, which goes against his vow of celibacy. And then, when her pimp confesses that he’s the one who killed our hero’s parents, well, all bets are off. The VelociPastor has a new mission from God and it involves killing lots of people, including a rogue sect of ninja Knights Templar.
I completely expected to hate this movie, seeing it as SyFy or Troma level dreck. To me surprise, it’s cunningly in on the joke and understands exactly the kind of movie that it is. Throw in an utterly bonkers overly edited lovemaking sequence and you have a movie I’ll be telling people about for the next few weeks.
The funniest part of the film — there are many — was when the church brings in an exorcist, played by animator/musician/toy designer/renaissance man Voltaire. Look — any movie where ninjas battle prostitutes and priests is going to be anything but boring. Pretty cool for a movie that came out of a trailer from 2011!
The VelociPastor is available on DVD and Digital August 13 on such platforms as iTunes, Comcast, Spectrum, Dish, Vudu, Amazon, Fandango and Sling. A blu ray release will follow on September 17. Since its debut, it’s now streaming for free on plenty of platforms. If you want to know more, we also did a review with director Brendan Steere.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent a stream screener and DVD of this movie by its PR team, but that has no bearing on our review.
A woman boards a train for a murder mystery game that her lover acts in. However, partway through their journey, several of the actors in the fake murder take things further than expected, making the mystery an actual series of thefts and murders. And this movie is just getting started with this twist!
The next one happens when the train derails into a lake in the middle of the night. Now, beyond being trapped in the sinking wreckage, there’s also an amphibian monster that wants to devour every single one of them. Think Humanoids from the Deep.
Seriously, I walked away from the screen for one minute and suddenly I was watching a completely different one than I started. I had to rewind to make sure I hadn’t somehow started watching a completely different movie. And I kept wondering when does Lance Henriksen show up? The end. He shows up at the end.
Also, I kinda love that the monster is known as the Soul Shredder.
This film was written and produced by Suzanne DeLaurentiis, who was also the producer for Rocky V and Mannequin 2: Mannequin On the Move. I also learned that she’s the cousin of Frankie Avalon from her site. There’s always a music connection!
If you’re in the mood for a movie that’ll keep you guessing — and combines undersea humanoid monsters with 1930’s Clue–like murder mystery — this is it. Honestly, it’s a genre unto itself.
D-Railed is available today, August 6, via on demand and DVD.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. That has no impact on our review.
Created by Will Gong, directed by Lauren Klixbull and produced by Gabriel Reiter, Bunkheads is a self-distributed short-form series starring Josh Covitt (The Mindy Project), Carly Turro (Homeland), Khalif Boyd (Criminal Minds), and Chris O’Brien (Rosewood) as roommates who are forced to live together in a bunker during a zombie apocalypse.
This random group includes Dani the actress, Cash the computer nerd who loves to work out, Matt the elementary teacher who tries to hold everyone together and Kip, an immature wannabe rapper. While trapped in the cramped quarters of a now-deceased Korean millionaire, the Bunkheads live on canned food and try not to drive one another crazy.
Will they get rescued? Is there anyone else still alive? Will they kill one another before the zombies get them? All of these questions — and more — will be answered.
There are only six episodes, but they pass by quickly and are pretty amusing. While no second season has been announced, I’d love to see where the story goes next. It was plenty of fun and moves so fast that the entire season is over before you realize it.
Mt. Misery Road is a real place and this movie is inspired by real events. You know how that goes — many movies have bragged of the same thing. There supposedly was an insane asylum that burned down — perhaps caused by one of the women held there — and a white dress wearing ghost that wanders the woods at night. It’s also a treacherous path to take — it’s one of the highest peaks in Long Island. There is also a “gravity hill” there where your car will roll uphill (this isn’t unique, there are several in the United States; one is in Ross Township right outside of Pittsburgh, for example). If you’d like to know more about Mt. Misery Road, this New York Daily News article is pretty informative.
Speaking of movies inspired by supposedly real events, the name Amityville has been used by at least 23 films. In 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family inside the large Dutch Colonial home on 112 Ocean Avenue, which was located in the suburbs of Long Island in a town called — you guessed it — Amityville. Four years later, the Lutz family moved in and left within 28 days due to the phenomena that attacked them while they were there. It became a book, a movie and another PR opportunity for the Warrens before taking over the public consciousness. The very name Amityville leads one to think of that house with the haunted windows today.
Very few of those movies inspired by the Lutz family are worth watching, save Amityville II: The Possession, a completely unhinged Italian exploitation movie wrapped in American big studio clothes. Even the original and remake are only just OK; Amityville 3-D has its moments and then it’s a mixed bag from then on out.
Making matters worse, starting with 1990’s The Amityville Curse, the Amityville brand name has mostly meant direct to video and limited release efforts. An exception is the 2005 remake of the original, which somehow makes the somewhat boring 1979 film even more pedantic. We’ve had The Amityville Curse, Amityville: The New Generation, Amityville Dollhouse, The Amityville Asylum, Amityville Death House, The Amityville Playhouse and even Amityville Prison, not to mention a Legacy, a Terror and a film that promises No Escape. What’s next? Our dog is currently working on The Amityville Doghouse about a family of six chihuahuas who wonder why they got their dream house so cheap until a ghost cat arrives.
Now, the legend of Mt. Misery Road — no relation to Clinton Road, which also has a movie that we saw recently — and Amityville have come together in the film Amityville Mt. Misery Road.
This film is a true auteur project from the husband and wife team of Chuck and Karolina Morrongiello. Together, the couple did everything — writing, directing, producing, acting, set decoration, makeup, the music — along with one or two other names, like Elan Menkin, who helped with the edit and sound.
Within the film, Chuck and Karolina play a couple named Charlie and Buzi who are obsessed with the paranormal. The movie starts with an incredibly long sequence where Charlie drives to his house and checks his mail. It might be the longest vehicle drive to a home I’ve seen since the epic van journey of Thor in Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare. Even opening the mailbox and getting to the front door necessitates nearly ten jump cuts and we haven’t even gotten into the front door of Charlie’s palatial Florida home.
The next several moments of the film are spent watching the couple read the internet and learn about Mt. Misery Road in real time. Web page after web page — and even a slide show of monsters like demon dogs and Mothman — appear with both commenting on the proceedings before cuddling in bed and getting ready to fly to Long Island. Buzi has a prophetic nightmare that she will face off with the red eyes of the Mothman, but despite her pleas, they decide to go anyway.
This is a film made up of montages to the songs of Chuck Morrongiello. To be fair, he did play on an album with Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin. Finally, the pair make their way to a bar near the road and are warned off by an old man who seems like he’d rather be playing that One Touch Machine in the corner. Then, Buzi dances for around an hour or ten minutes. Time in this film works like that. And a visit to an expert on Mt. Misery Road just leads to another old man yelling at them, telling them to not go there, no matter what.
Well, Charlie and Buzi go there anyway and walk around the woods, exploring what has to be the remnants of the asylum and finding a cross just hanging off a tree. They get separated and their phones don’t work and Charlie gets attacked before the film ends with Buzi Blair Witch-style wandering the woods while swearing. Then she gets attacked before the movie ends.
I really have no idea how to review what I just watched. It’s like someone made their own movie just for themselves, but then along the way someone said, “You guys should totally sell that!” And then they did. It really does feel like a passion project between the couple and hey, they did really make a movie and get it on streaming services and into actual stores pressed on to actual DVDs. It does take some effort to make a film, even one as astoundingly bad as this one. So I can’t hate on it. Some people like to dress up their dogs. Other like to flip homes. It seems like Morrongiellos like to use their iPhones to make movies about ghosts. Whether or not you feel like encouraging them by spending $9.96 is totally up to you.
I mean, I was totally entertained and pulled Becca in to watch it with me. Whether or not I was entertained for the right reasons is up for debate.
If I had the opportunity to get a review line on the box cover, it would be edited down to say something like, “Not since Manos The Hands of Fate and Things have I been so…astounded by a film.” – B&S About Movies.
The IMDB review page for this film is pretty astounding, filled with one star and ten-star reviews and almost nothing in between, save one review that gives it 4/10 and says that it deserves more than ten stars. So there’s that.
Honestly, I can’t believe that this movie exists. I’m not sure if it even should. But if Chuck and Karolina Morrongiello decide to make a sequel, I’ll be first in line to see it.
Want to know more? Visit the official site. You can find this movie at Walmart — for actual proof, just take a look at the photo above, I’m as amazed as you are — and on demand.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent directly to us by Chuck Morrongiello. Quite obviously, that has had no impact on our review.
Any time I hear the phrase “in the tradition of the best post-Scream slashers,” I get worried that I’m going to completely hate a movie. However, this 2018 Austrian effort — known there as The Last Party of Your Life — defied that title and all the worries that it brought with it. This movie feels closer to the slasher’s Italian absentee father, the giallo, as its look, lighting and even appropriation of modern dance music within the narrative structure of those films makes total sense. It also owes plenty to I Know What You Did Last Summer, which owes a lot to Terror Train and Slaughter High.
Julia and her entire class have just graduated high school and taken a trip to Austria’s X Fest, which takes place on an island. Days of drinking, drugging and promiscuity form the backdrop to friendships being tested and a horrible secret that will cost more than one of these teens their life.
Directed by Dominik Hartl (Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies) is making a cover version of American slashers, but he remembers something that his domestic contemporaries have forgotten — how to build tension and fear within the actual stalk before the slash. I also love that this movie takes a bite out of the current generation, who keep partying despite the mounting evidence that someone is out there with a grudge and a horrifying need to obliterate them. This is also a movie that is enhanced by modern technology instead of being hindered by it.
With neon hues and foggy backdrops that echo the past of the genre while racing toward its future, I found a lot to love in this film. The only downside for some may be the dubbing, but Shudder offers the film in its original language if you have an issue with that. If you’ve watched enough Italian horror, a silly voice speaking dialogue isn’t going to stop you.
Movies usually either ask us to fear or celebrate killers, but rarely see them as people who could be our friends and family members. the Clovehitch Killer is disquieting because it asks us to do exactly that — to visualize that the man across the pew from us at church, our scoutmaster and even our father could be a monster.
Tyler Burnside (Charlie Plummer) lives with his devoutly Christian family in Kentucky, in a small town whose residents have been haunted for a decade by the murders of the Clovehitch Killer. Our protagonist claims that he never really thought all that much of those crimes, other than being part of the ceremonies to celebrate the victims. One night, while attempting to sneak out and kiss a girl in his father’s truck, he discovers a torn up piece of bondage photography. This isn’t a Playboy thrown into the woods. It’s so upsetting that the girl cuts off their dalliance and starts rumors in school that the photo was his.
This discovery leads him to explore the places that his father — all-around family man Don Burnside (an incredible Dylan McDermott) — has kept hidden. This isn’t rooting around in your parent’s room looking for their copy of The Joy of Sex or a copy of Behind the Green Door (I’m dating myself and also presupposing that your parents had great taste in adult film). What he finds are explicit bondage-heavy magazines that look like Richard Kern shot them. And worse, a Polaroid of a woman. Her name leads him to hunt through Google, a late night search that leads his mother (Samantha Mathis) to believe he’s merely masturbating. If only things were that simple.
Tyler’s church and scout friends have kept him at arm’s length since the rumors of him being into BDSM started. He finds a friend in Kassi (Madisen Beaty, who was in The Master and will show up in Tarantino’s upcoming Once Upon a Time In Hollywood), who is absolutely obsessed with the Clovehitch murders — for a reason that pushes the film toward its harrowing conclusion. That said, if you’re living in a boring small town, I absolutely endorse hanging out with redheads obsessed with murder. I married one, after all.
On a camping trip, father confronts son about what he has found and claims that the real killer was Rudy, who up until now we’ve only known as a vegetative man in a wheelchair. The guilt of the murders caused him to try to kill himself by wrecking his car. Again — if it were only so simple.
There’s a narrative jump right after this scene that’s completely jarring. In fact, it’s so out there that we considered just turning the film off, as we’ve become used to the moments where modern thrillers inexplicably lose steam and go off the rails. This feels like that and I don’t want to spoil it, other than to say you’ll know it when you see it.
I’m pleased to report that we stuck with it and this becomes a movie with no easy answers or resolution. That’s pretty much how real life is, with no clean endings, just moving past things and hoping to survive until the next day.
Obviously, this film is inspired by Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, who also created collages of sexualized images, was a scout leader and seemed to be a normal family man. Writer Christopher Ford (Clown, Spider-Man: Homecoming) and director Duncan Skiles (who directed Ford’s The Felt series, as well as the stand-up specials of Reggie Watts) have taken that real-life story and created something that feels just as real.
This movie pretty much escaped notice when it was released last year, but I’d recommend it, particularly if you love true crime stories. It’s available on Hulu.
From the makers of 2013’s Hi-8, this movie promises five new twisted tales showcasing the talents of both veteran and emerging horror filmmakers. It all starts when two young women take the “Terror Tour” through the underbelly of Hollywood, leading them into a world of pure horror. This opening is written and directed by Brad Sykes, who was behind the first two Camp Blood movies.
The first story, “Death Has a Conscience,” is all about a new drug called Spit and how death itself comes to visit one of its users. This one comes from Anthony Catanese, who directed Sodomaniac and the upcoming Teenage Bloodsuckin’ Bimbos.
“Dealers of Death” is all about a collector of serial killer memorabilia who gets way to close to his hobby. Tim Ritter is behind this segment and his credits stretch back until the 1980’s with writing, acting, directing and producing credits on a ton of small horror projects.
“Night Drop” comes from Amanda Payton, who produced 2019’s Clownado, a film that has an audacious concept. Here, strange things happen at a video store after closing time. There are some great visuals here that seem inspired by Fulci’s City of the Living Dead with the entire concept taken from Ringu.
Brad Sykes comes back to direct “Cold Read,” which stars Julia Valley (she’s shown up in the new season of What We Do In the Shadows) and Fabiana Formica, who you may remember as Valentina from Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man. This entire segment is the most professional looking of the film, appearing to have quality and direction that makes it seem like it comes from a completely different universe from some of the earlier stories.
“The Muse” is a riff on H.P. Lovecraft as told by Todd Sheets, the writer and director of the aforementioned Clownado as well as several other horror movies stretching the whole way back to 1985 like Dreaming Purple Neon and the Zombie Bloodbath series.
As always, anthology films can be a mixed bag. Sadly, some of the stories here depend on cheap video effects that anyone with an iPhone can create and wipe transitions that George Lucas would think were too much. I barely made it through some of the segments, which seemed like the kind of films that you’d see in a horror convention contest versus an actual movie that you’d pay money for. That said, if you’re a fan of ultra-low budget digital video down and dirty horror filmmaking, you may enjoy this.
Wild Eye Releasing will release Hi-Death on disc, digital and limited edition VHS June 10. For more information, visit the official Facebook page.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company. That has no impact on our review.
I saw someone set this movie up with the fact that it would be too upsetting for many viewers and it was given a blanket trigger warning because people need to be told that horror movies are actually upsetting — even when they pale in comparison to foreign horror or past frights. Read that as this ain’t no Cannibal Ferox. That said, there’s a fair amount of hype behind this one, with words like genius being bandied about.
I’m being candid. When I see a trigger warning before any critical analysis, my radar goes off. Horror itself demands that we walk into a film with no real preparation, ready to be frightened and perhaps shocked. Removing that makes it safe when the genre itself depends on an utter lack of safety. Yes, I’m being insensitive on some level. But really — when something has a hard R or you can tell from the trailer it’s going to get rough, you don’t need much more warning than that.
Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams, Get Out) was once a talented cellist with plenty of promise, but her mother’s illness — and her own mental illness — forced her to leave Bachoff, a school for gifted musicians. After a decade of being a caregiver, she comes back into the school’s orbit to travel to Shanghai and help the school pick a new student. There, she meets the woman who became her replacement, Lizzie (Logan Browning, who was in Bratz: The Movie). Their shared experiences lead to fast friendship and near-immediate romance.
After a night of lovemaking — where Charlotte claims to be a virgin — they decide to rough it and backpack throughout China, but Lizzie becomes violently ill, needing more and more ibuprofen and water before becoming convinced that she is full of insects. After they’re kicked off a bus, things go to their logical conclusion: Lizzie must chop off her hand if she’s to survive.
That’s when the film reveals its first twist: Charlotte was behind all of this, drugging her new lover with her dead mother’s pills and then created each moment that led to the mutilation.
At the center of all of this are the teachers of Bachoff. Steven Weber plays Anton, who at first comes off as a gentle man who has taught hard lessons to create some of the best musicians of this generation, along with the help of his wife Paloma and fellow teachers Theis and Geoffrey. At the center of his teachings is The Chapel, an acoustically ideal room where only the best students are given a special tattoo and allowed to play “The Perfection,” where any errors lead to horrible consequences.
Several times throughout The Perfection, there are rewinds to show us exactly what we’ve missed. I’d rather not reveal anything beyond that point, other than to say that the only upsetting thing I encountered was an arm slashing that was more based on the FX being quite effective than any worry for my mental safety. There’s also plenty of rape language and threats, but you can see that coming way before it occurs.
Richard Shepard directed this, formerly working with Williams on the HBO series Girls. He has plenty of TV work on his resume such as the pilot episode of Ugly Betty, as well as the movie The Matador.
My major issue with the film — take it from the white CIS male — is that the only way that Charlotte found to free Lizzie from a lifetime of abuse is to subject her to, well, more abuse. It feels like it’s exploiting the very audience that it’s trying to lift up. And I’m fine with exploitation — as any quick spin through my list of reviews will show you — but when a film comes from Miramax — a studio whose history negatively has intersected with the #MeToo movement, this all comes off as pretty carny and not in a fun Kroger Babb kind of way. This review from Vox hits it right on the head: this is a film that wishes to “regurgitate the superficial beats of #MeToo…without actually interrogating the oppressive cultural underpinnings that begat the movement in the first place.”
I guess maybe we expect too much from a Netflix film these days, maybe. Then again, at least it didn’t rip off Suspiria as much as I thought it was going to. I admire that the film went from a disease outbreak film to a personal revenge story in a major twist, but it didn’t shake my world as so many others have reported online. Then again, it seems the bar for worldshaking has been lowered to the ground floor in 2019.
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