Cassie (Angelina Danielle Cama) just moved out to the sticks because her father Lucas (Harley Wallen) was starting to worry about how bad she was getting. Add a new stepmom (Kaiti Wallen) and a new town and an urban legend and you have quite the plot here.
Directed by Wallen and written by Bret Miller, this movie makes a quick jump from underage drinking to busting into a haunted house along with new friends Anna (Jamie Bernadette) and Tucker (Mason Heidger). What they find are video upon video of women being abducted and assaulted and when the home’s residents, May (Erika Hoveland) and Clete (Jimmy Doom), come home they figure out who broke in and go after them with extreme prejudice.
Wallen has a good eye for putting together his films, which include this as well as Tale of Tailsand A Bennett Song Holiday. While not a high gloss production, this has some nice dark tones and looks like some care was put into making it. Growing up in a small town like this, I felt like yelling at Cassie to maybe avoid local bars — even if Mel Novak is the owner — and just drink at home, not getting into trouble.
Ash and Bone is available on demand and on digital from Deskpop Entertainment.
Calvin (Andy Gershenzon) is away from his family at a college reunion, preparing a speech, when he meets Rachel (Rebeca Robles), who as we learn as the movie progresses is the great regret of his life. How deep and how wrong that regret is will come out as these two characters continue this conversation over the course of the evening, growing more and more uncomfortable and veering into so much more.
Ninety minutes, two actors, a lifetime of secrets. Director and writer Christopher Denham has put together quite the film here, one that demands that you stay with it at first. Yes, it’s a slow and at times even cliche-ridden conversation between two potential old friends. Yet you need to stay with it. You need to hide like a fly on the wall and see what happens next, because things — many things — happen.
The ending of it all comes as we constantly shift protagonist and antagonist, as the truth comes out, but come on. Once that dildo gets put on the table, we all know where it’s going.
It’s easy to hate influencers. It’s simple to say social media has ruined everything. And yet, to look into oneself and the world and realize that these things just magnify how bad things are and therefore, it’s easy to blame the shiny and pretty people, because no society functions without a scapegoat.
Kurtis David Harder directed Spiral and this is worlds better than that film. Along with co-writer Tesh Gutti, he tells the story of Madison (Emily Tennant), a social influencer in Thailand who meets up with CW (Cassandra Naud), a woman with a huge birthmark on her face and creeping darkness in her soul. She brings Madison into her world, at first showing her how it’s more real than her reality to taking photos of every meal and every outfit. As Madison lies about how much she’s experiencing and pines for the end of her relationship to Ryan (Rory J. Saper), the man who got her into influencing in the first place, she’s kidnapped to CW’s special place on the island, a space that is as gorgeous as it is potentially deadly.
So yes, by all means hate on influencers, but do not miss this film, which just plain works.
Directed and written by Laurence Vannicelli — he also wrote Porno — the logline for this movie is frankly horrifying: “A man’s fiancée starts behaving like his recently deceased mother, leading him to confront his deepest traumas to free her from the bewildering possession.”
Emmett (Kyle Gallner) is the man, Anya (Holland Roden) is the woman and yes indeed, things do get strange. His mother was a famous therapist and her roleplaying session therapy is supposed to get him through this, but the mindgames between man and woman end up becoming man and woman and mom and oh man, that’s a menage a trois no one wants no matter what the Pornhub paradigm tells you.
If you looked at the woman you loved and she started smoking and dressing like your mom, would you stay? Doesn’t every man want to marry his mother? Well, maybe in theory. But is the solution to this story supernatural or just mental manipulation? Maybe heading back home and settling affairs isn’t really the best of ideas, but I say that with every horror movie, because going back home and being confronted by the loss of a parent is a harrowing thing so I can see why so many movies touch on it. This one does it right, does it strange and ends up being more than memorable.
A lot of slashers came out in 1980 and maybe Terror Train isn’t as fondly remembered by some, but for those that are fans — like, well, your author — it works because you truly feel as if you’re on a train. You also get some incredible scenery and a killer that keeps shifting disguises, all while the film navigates themes that most movies don’t touch forty years later, including hidden love between male friends and a transgendered character that to talk more of would be a spoiler.
Quebec-born director Philippe Gagnon — well, Terror Trainis from Canada — is working from a new script by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin, writers for the Netflix series Slasher. Everything starts just like the original, as Kenny (Noah Parker) is pranked by Doc (Matias Garrido) and gets away with it. By pranked, I mean that he ends up in bed with a dead body. Alana (Robyn Alomar) feels like the gang should confess, but instead the next three years of college go by and find them passengers on a tourist train that conveniently goes through a zone with no signal.
There’s still a Mitchy (Emma Elle Paterson). A magician (Tim Rozon) is on board. And yes, the clown gets killed early, just like the first movie. But does it have the magic of the 1980 classic?
The killer only switches costumes here a few times, sticking to that clown costume, while the movie switches holidays from New Year’s Eve to Halloween. This also gender swaps Carne the conductor to be an older woman played by Mary Walsh. All of these decisions seem like changes for change’s sake; I have no issue with a female conductor but I really miss the steady guiding hand of Ben Johnson and the way he seemed like someone who genuinely cared about protecting his passengers. The lack of costume changes points to a script that doesn’t understand what worked so well; a clown is scary, but not knowing who the killer could be is much more sinister.
Another misstep is that in the original, Alana seemed to be someone trying to atone for her past sins, but also had enough of an edge that you believed that she’d go along with the prank. This version seems so unsure of herself that one wonders how she’ll survive.
The CGI train scenes and kills take away two other things so great about the first film, one that was actually shot on a train car to give the simulation that we were moving down the rails in the snow. This never feels like it takes place anywhere other than a room. And the weirdest part is there’s a Phantasm-style song that sounds so derivative that I was sure that they just followed the example of the Shaw Brothers and stole it.
This trip down the tracks follows the original pretty close until we switch tracks for the last ten minutes. Some folks may not miss David Copperfield and the long dance numbers. I totally do. The original is silly in many ways, but has some really frightening moments and unlike so many slashers, feels like it could happen.
Yet I wonder: who is this for? Anyone who loves the first one is going to be irked before it even begins. Is a train relevant for today’s audience? Oh well. I guess the rights were up and someone was going to make it. As always, we still have the original.
20. TRIPS: Vacations don’t always go how you planned them. Can you get away from the getaway?
This movie may use the UK title of Sleepaway Camp, but it’s actually a lost Polonia Brothers movie that was made by John Polonia and Todd Michael Smith, then restored and finished by Mark. He also provides the narration that keeps this film together, the duct tape holding together this shot on video haunted house, as it were.
This starts with a beach vacation that promises booze and babes, as they say, but ends with a fight sequence that goes on for a long time — and may still be going on — along with some cool see-through masks for the killer.
The camera flies all over the place but there’s a lot of blood. Sure, it’s not really a finished film, but do you come to a fifty-minute Polonia brothers movie from 1993 expecting something that the Criterion Collection will release?
Sigrun (Isabella Händler) is working as a nurse for Baroness Heidenreich (Inge Maux), who is dealing with Parkinson’s disease. Why? Well, it turns out that the old woman at one time was the director of an Aryan maternity ward and she may be able to help Sigrun locate her real parents. She soon discovers a secret Third Reich archive but her file is the only one missing. That’s because the Baroness knows who she is — the Valkyrie name is part of why — and she wants Sigrun to join her feminist secret society, the very same one that tried to take power away from Hitler. Oh yeah — they’re also powered by the darkest of occult powers, ones that can show Sigrun exactly how her mother died.
The debut film of director and writer Marie Alice Wolfszahn, this is that most rare of movies: a feminist gothic that has a berserk jazz soundtrack and deals with “völkisch” occultism, one that draws on the pure Aryan blood of Germany, which, yeah, that last part of the sentence made me uncomfortable to write. It’s gorgeous, sure, but man, the imagery of Teutonic tribes hits a little strange in my mind. Maybe I’m just a little sensitive, what with all the all black American flags flying in my neighborhood.
That said — there’s a lot to think about in this film and plenty to stare at. Those dream sequences are something else.
Directed and written by Karim Ouelhaj, it’s about Martha (Eline Schumacher) and Félix (Benjamin Ramon), the children of the Butcher of Mons, a notorious Belgian serial killer from the 1990s. Martha lives a normal life while her brother has taken over the work of his father. But when she’s harassed and violently attacked at work, she finds herself in the same twisted mind of her father and brother.
Unable to get back at her accuser at work, Martha soon takes a woman hostage and chains her up, belittling the woman for her looks. Then, Felix joins her, pulling her further into his darkness. All of the pent-up hatred that she has for herself, all the pain and trauma of growing up the daughter of a killer, it all comes out as she attacks her victim.
Just let me warn you now: this is a dark watch, one that will upset nearly everyone who watches it and it doesn’t have the release valve of the slasher. It’s unrelenting blackness, a way too normal world filled with broken people perpetuating the cycle of abuse, violence and pain. I don’t usually give out trigger warnings, but trigger warning for everything.
This Tubi original is the tale of Bri Collins (Novi Brown), a recently divorced woman who is under house arrest for a year thanks to her ex-husband Michael’s (Christopher Bencomo) crimes. Instead of just getting to hide out and do her time, a stalker who can control her home — this is why I don’t let Alexa control mine — starts trying to kill her.
If you’re expecting this to be a slasher, it’s more of a Lifetime-style woman in danger movie. I mean, that’s fine, but I’d hate if you showed up expecting anything else.
Directed by Brant Daugherty, who co-wrote this with his wife Kimberly (who also is in the movie as best friend Sofia), Bri finally gets sick and tired of getting attacked in a home she can’t leave, so she hires Xavier Johnson (Terrell Carter), a dark and mysterious security guard who is also searching for his missing sister. Do they fall for one another? Do I even need to ask?
Look, I realize these Tubi movies aren’t great, but they’re something I look forward to. This is pretty much by the numbers, but sometimes that’s all you need.
Jess (Christina Masterson) is a single mother who has been picked to be a contestant on Love at Last, which is The Bachlor. Meanwhile, a disco ball-masked killer is taking out all of the other contestants.
Directed by Tim Cruz — who wrote it with Blake Rutledge — The Final Rose does a fun job of taking the expected reality show moments and infusing the spirit of the slasher within them. It also has smart casting, featuring actors from The Young and the Restless, General Hospital and One Life to Live.
I’m not the biggest fan of reality romance, but I see the potential for jealous contestants to become a murderous place where a stalk and slash killer can have his or her way with the contestants. This is totally the kind of movie that could play on Lifetime years ago. The writing is quite good, way better than a made for streaming movie should be, skewering everything in its way.
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