That Tubi exclusive banner on movies is like a must be 18 years to rent sticker for my ancient brain because I keep watching these movies. Teardrop has two teachers — Chris (Jeff Branson, who was in the 2010 remake of I Spit On Your Grave) and Rebecca (Murray Gray) — who have brought three of their students — Josie (Rachael Thundat), Teala (Megan Lee) and Ross (Michael MacLane) — to the ghost town of Teardrop.
From the first meeting with hotel owner Denver (Bradley Fisher), you can tell that things aren’t going to end well. The whole town is infused with evil due to some hangings in its past and Chris just keeps coming back, again and again, probably dying over and over while dooming everyone who comes with him.
Sadly, none of the characters demonstrate a single unique angle: Josie uses her looks to get whatever she wants, Teala is an Asian hard working professional student and Ross is a white rapper who alternatively tries to connect and push away women. Chris is a writer whose failures have pushed him to teaching and then this town that he’s always felt drawn to, kind of like the Branson version of Jack Torrance while Rebecca starts to fall for him for no reason whatsoever. Also: edibles instead of smoking weed because it’s 2022.
Ah, it all makes sense to me now. Director Steven R. Monroe made those I Spit On Your Grave remakes as well as the film Complacentand, as most horror directors do these days, plenty of holiday streaming offerings. It was written by Spyder Dobrofsky who also alternates between horror and holidays.
Of all things, I liked the local girl — well, she can shapeshift, so I don’t want to be misgendering someone with that ability — who basically keeps telling the rapping kid that she’s dead and that he’s going to die too and even after she makes him puke all over the place — and lose his chain — he still considers going back to hook up. I grew up in a small town too, even if we weren’t all ghosts that had been lynched a century and change ago and I often wanted to tell anyone new to get out and go anywhere else.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie first appeared on this site as part of the Midwest Weirdfest coverage on February 28, 2022.
Director-writer Chad Ferrin’s (The Deep Ones, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet) Night Caller pulls from so many films, feeling like a modern U.S. version of a late in the game giallo, which is not a bad thing.
It gets the genre names to get you into the movie part down, including Steve Railsback, Lew Temple, Bai Ling and Kelli Maroney in the lineup. And it really lays on the color switches, the gore and the weirdness throughout.
Clementine (Susan Priver) is a phone psychic for Jade (Bai Ling), except that both of them have some level of psychic ability for real. When James Smith calls in, Clementine knows right away that he’s a killer and she can see his murders inside her mind, a talent her mother had and her father (Robert Miano) has worried about enough that he makes her carry a gun. Yet when the cops try to help, they end up dead and now the danger really begins.
With references to Maniac and literally showing Dementia 13 and Patrick, this feels like a straight to video VHS movie and again, that’s a good thing. It’s not perfect, but it’s quite willing to go absolutely for it, getting scalping, necrophilia and violent murder — not to mention misogynistic dialogue out of an 80s movie — into it.
The best part? Bai Ling is absolutely berserk. She should be in a real giallo, because I would pay money for that now. Let’s try to make that happen.
Night Caller is available on a number of digital and cable platforms, including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, iNDemand and DISH from 123 Go Films.
Lara Winslet (Rachel Daigh) may be an expert geologist in volcanology, but when an accident at work leads to her falling inside a hole where no one can neither see nor hear her, she’ll need more than her intelligence to survive.
This movie proves to me why I never leave our movie basement because nature is frightening. Then again, you would think that a geologist would know better. Maybe she was obsessing on the affair she’s having with Adam (Neb Chupin) or how her father Nick (James Cosmo, Braveheart, Highlander, Game of Thrones) has been the one really raising her daughter. But really, she needs to get out of that hole and away from that snake.
If you enjoy human against nature movies, this is for you. Daigh is pretty much the only actor on screen for long stretches and handles herself quite well.
Director John Real (The Beginning: Feel the Dead, Obsessio), who co-wrote this with his sister and usual writing partner Adriana Marzagalli, has set up a challenge for himself shooting nearly all in one location with one actor, something many more experienced creatives would shy away from.
Breath is now available from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Killer alligator have emerged from the sewers — the title does not lie — to attack a small Louisiana town that only has their sheriff, an alligator expert and an old gator hunter to protect them from the vilest of scaly critters.
The synopsis of this movie claims that alligators “are coming out of the sewers, they are coming for you, they are coming for your children, they are coming for your grandmother.” You have to appreciate that level of honesty.
Director and writer Paul Dale, who has also made the movies Chosen, Silent but Deadly (a mime slasher) and Fast Food & Cigarettes, has about an hour to tell this story, as well as appear in the cast. Perhaps the best known actor in this is Manon Pages, who has been in The Purge TV series, Puragtory Road and several of Dale’s other films.
This film certainly doesn’t take itself seriously and boasts not only CGI gators, but a gator autopsy that’s a small scale version of the scene in Jaws. It’s not the best gator movie you’ve ever seen, but it might be the best one I’ve seen in 2022.
Sewer Gators is available on VOD, DVD, Blu-Ray and collectible VHS on June 3 from the official BY THE HORNS site.
TV historian and archivist Stu Shostak, the subject of this doc, started in Hollywood by handing out tickets to Norman Lear sitcom tapings to people in Hollywood and then started doing the audience warm-ups for All In The Family, Silver Spoons and One Day At A Time.
After learning that entertainment legend Lucille Ball was hosting question and answer classes at a college nearby, Stu transformed his encyclopedic knowledge of her career into becoming an essential part of her small inner circle, acting as her archivist and as an assistant to her husband Gary Morton.
After Ball passed away, Shostak pioneered what we know now as podcasting. His internet shows — all about the classic years of TV — became a success, as did a series of I Love Lucy conventions. It was at one of these conventions that Stu would meet the love of his life, Jeanine Kasun, a music teacher and fellow Lucy super-fan.
That’s where the story of Stu’s life takes a turn, as he must navigate the health care system to keep Jeanine alive after she suffers a brain aneurysm.
With appearances by Tony Dow (Leave it to Beaver), Michael Cole (The Mod Squad), Ed Asner (Lou Grant), Butch Patrick (The Munsters), Margaret O’Brien, Geri Jewell, Beverly Washburn, Wink Martindale and many more stars of television, this movie invites you into Stu’s life, in good times and bad, to give you a full picture of what it’s like to be someone that has gone from fan to friend of so many Hollywood stars.
Director C.J. Wallis also made another TV culture doc, Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much, and does a great job of layering footage, interviews and real life moments to create an intriguing narrative.
Stu’s Show is available on all major media platforms from Upstream Flix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Emily Fear is a librarian in Western PA. You can hear her weekly on the women’s wrestling podcast Grit & Glitter, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major platforms.
A lonely twenty-something in the Pacific Northwest is exhausted with modern dating when she meets a promising man the old fashioned way – in the produce section of her local grocery store. He’s cute, charmingly awkward and forward in that polite, self-deprecating way that puts others at ease. Their meet cute turns into a date turns into sex turns into something more, then he suggests a weekend away. That’s when things go… awry.
Fresh isn’t the first film to tackle the horrors of modern dating in a literal sense, but it comes at the idea from a novel worst case scenario: What if the too-good-to-be-true romantic interest was, in fact, a cannibal surgeon who makes a fortune off a slow, meticulous harvesting of female flesh? Instead of shacked up on a weekend away, you’re shackled in the barebones basement of his mid-century abode, left communicating through the wall with his other supply sources, the women he has previously lured into this trap.
Remarkably assured for a debut film, Mimi Cave pulls a fun trick on her audience, playing up the fizzy, fun romance in the film’s first half hour. Only when Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) goes face first onto the carpet after being drugged by “Steve” (Sebastian Stan) does the title of the film appear, an ominous echo of the produce section where these two met cute only twenty minutes earlier.
But instead of a complete tonal shift, Fresh finds an interesting mid-space between romantic-comedy and captive horror, releasing tension through dryly funny conversations between Noa and her fellow captive, Penny, the occasional needle-drop montage of Steve preparing his human meats, even the investigations of Mollie, who suspects something is amiss when her best friend disappears. Then one quick twist and the tension is mounting all over again.
The film is anchored by strong performances by Edgar-Jones and Stan, both of whom add tremendous layers to their characters. Stan especially seems right at home in his portrayal of an amoral murderer who is also a hopeless romantic and supreme nerd. He’s almost charismatic enough to remain so even in light of his odious nature. Almost.
Fresh is smart enough not to veer too far in humanizing its villain, preferring instead to emphasize the wit and wiles of its hero and her fellow women in peril. While this film has a lot of sardonic points to make about modern dating, its most earnest note is the bond between the women at the mercy of powerful, violent forces beyond their control. Maybe you can’t trust the guy you met in the grocery store, but your best friend is going to be there for you, come hell or high water or a cannibalistic conspiracy of the rich.
SPOILER WARNING: I’m going to do my best to be as spoiler-free as possible, but I also want people going to see this movie to be, you know, surprised.
It seems like the majority of people posting negatively about this movie hit the Venn Diagram just right of those that enjoy negatively posting on holidays as well. Now, I may be one of the most cynical people you’ll ever meet, but it turns out that I actually want movies to entertain me. And when they entertain people other than me, I can accept their audience, move on and enjoy the movies that entertain me without dwelling.
So yes: this is a superhero movie. It’s a blockbuster. It’s the 28th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You also have had to have some cursory knowledge of Wandavision — there’s this great thing called YouTube that has these things called recaps, you know — and What If? yet you can enjoy this without that. And yes, this has Sam Raimi coming back to direct a superhero movie.
Even more importantly, this is the return of Sam Raimi to movies about cursed books.
Doctor Strange director and co-writer Scott Derrickson left over creative differences — his movie The Black Phone is coming out someday, right? — and that left Raimi and Michael Waldron (Heels, Loki) to start over.
From the original trailers, I was worried that this would cover the same ground as Loki, with Strange being called on the carpet for his abuse of the multiverse. Yet the movie does an early rug pull and places — there’s that spoiler reminder one more time — Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch — into the role of big bad.
Some backstory: Wanda was born in Eastern Europe, where her parents were killed by a Stark Industries missile, and she and her brother Pietro (Quicksilver) survived and were augmented by Hydra’s Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. Working with Ultron, she tried to destroy Stark and the Avengers before learning that the robot’s real goal was destroying the human race. This led to her, the Vision (a clone of Ultron turned to the side of good) and the Avengers stopping Ultron and then her joining the team. She and Vision become a couple, join Steve Rogers’ side during the Civil War event and then she must destroy Vision to protect the Mind Stone from Thanos, which means nothing, as he uses the Time Stone to undo her and Vision’s sacrifice. After a five year-plus battle with Thanos, she and the Avengers win, but her grief at losing Vision causes her to basically abduct the entire town of Westview and create her own sitcom reality — she learned English as a child from watching American TV — and raising sons Tommy and Billy with the Vision before her illusion is shattered by Agatha Harkness. The truth is that she’s destined to be the Scarlet Witch — the MCU version of Dark Phoenix, the Harbinger of Chaos more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme — at which point Wanda traps Harkness in the town and leaves to study a book called the Darkhold, the Book of the Damned, created by the Elder God Chthon, written in blood on flesh pages (hey Sam Raimi) and bound into book form by Morgan Le Faye, not so coincidentally the villain of the first Dr. Strangemovie on TV in 1978, long before the MCU was even a thing.
Yet Wanda’s quest isn’t predicated on evil. She learns that there is more than one reality and that in each of these — you can glimpse these realities in your dreams — her children still exist and haven’t gone away when the spells she cast at Westview were negated. All she wants is her children, but to get them, she’ll destroy entire realities.
Meanwhile…take a breath…there’s America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who was born outside the multiverse and has the power to open doors between worlds. The first use of her powers pushed her parents into another reality and sent her running from the Scarlet Witch, who wants to absorb her power — killing her — so that she can find a world with her children and be a mother again.
We return to the central MCU reality — Earth-616 also the same number as the comic universe — where Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is attending the wedding of the love of his life, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) when a giant monster — which can’t legally be called Shuma-Gorath and is called Gargantos — attempts to take America, who is saved by Strange and Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong). Of course, our hero has no idea that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch, but soon figures it out. The entire magical training world of Kamar-Taj attempts to protect America, who must escape with Strange through the multiverse.
And that’s where I really feel like the spoilers would be too much, right?
So let’s just discuss the merits of the film.
I can’t lie. I walked out of the movie with a huge smile on my face, but any film that combines the bull alien Rintrah and a cameo of the Living Tribunal with the look and feel of a Raimi film — multiple dissolves of faces and objects like a comic book panel, wild POV shots, heroes getting slapped repeatedly and comedy mixed in with horror. Now, it’s not full-on Evil Dead, despite the idea that this is the scariest MCU movie ever. I’ve seen a lot of folks upset about that, but what did you expect? Did Raimi make the Spider-Man films gore-filled epics?
I also do like the idea that Dr. Strange continues to evolve from the self-possessed braggart he started as and the man who said to Spider-Man “In the grand calculus of the multiverse, their sacrifice means far more than their deaths.” Whereas in Spider-Man: No Way Home, that line showed that Strange would do anything to protect the multiverse, when Defender Stranger says it in the beginning, it’s to prove that Strange believes that he alone can save the say, when by the end, he realizes that he’s not the only hero. When he said to Starlord in Avengers: Infinity War that there was only one way to win, now he realizes that just as there are so many realities, there can also be so many solutions. He’s also learned from each different version of himself — Defender Strange, Earth-838 Strange and Sinister Strange — the same one from What If? — that he must make personal growth in addition to protecting the Earth. I loved the scene where he fixed his watch and bowed to Wong, showing that he understands his place.
That’s some pretty astounding character growth for a character in a blockbuster.
Also, for Raimi fans, the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 shows up. Bruce Campbell shows up — twice. Even a Grindhouse Releasing logo shows up. Throughout, I didn’t feel like he was compromised. The music fight alone is incredibly inventive, as is how Strange makes his way back to Earth despite being trapped on a ruined world.
Perhaps most moving is a line that a certain wheelchair-bound hero says in the film: “Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, doesn’t mean they are lost forever.” That’s an important message to understand. So is the fact that America has two mothers, a fact directly from the comic book and presented as such: it’s just an ordinary way of life. As for America, her look and powers have emerged directly from the comics and work perfectly within the film, as she shows by the end that she may be smarter than any of the adults locked in this battle.
I’d hope that even non-comic fans give this a chance. It’s a visual-filled odyssey through worlds of magic and I had so much fun throughout. It did what all good films should: it made me forget life for a fleeting moment — something needed more than ever — and gave me joy.
You can’t ask for more than that, even if you rarely get it.
I grow weary of critics who accept screeners from ultra-low-to-low-budget filmmakers, then, when that filmmaker name drops better-known directors and films, the review proceeds to judge that self-produced passion project against those Bayos n’ Bayhem’ed, A-List summer tent pole inspirations: it’s a losing proposition to a negative review.
A critic simply can not measure today’s 2020s’ indie streamers — no more than you could rationalize regional filmmakers of the ’70s, such as Don Dohler or Andy Milligan (Fiend, The Ghastly Ones), or SOV home video purveyors of the ’80s, such as Jon McBride (check out our “Exploring” feature), or Doug Ulrich and Al Darago (Scary Tales) and Donald Farmer (Scream Dream) — to the films that inspired said filmmakers, which would be everything from Hitchcock to Carpenter, between the usual soup-to-nuts sprockets.
Today’s young bucks, such as this film’s writer and director, Michael Matteo Rossi, are analogous to those up-against-the-budget indie filmmakers of ’70s and ’80s yore — as they deliver a fascinating entertainment experience (at least to this snobby, know-it-all critic) in observing how the modern, digitally-based filmmaker tackles the hard-to-tackle-on-nickles-and-dimes action and science fiction genres (Anton Doiron’s Space Trucker Bruce as the best-example).
Courtesy of today’s here-to-stay digital technologies, gone are the days of indie filmmakers heading out to a patch of woods, sans permits, with a camera loaded with short ends and a gaggle of their friends and amateur actors to leave their mark with a horror film (and don’t forget that de rigueur pair of overalls or coveralls). Today’s smart phone’d filmmakers, such as Anthony Z. James (Ghost) and James Cullen Bressack (For Jennifer) and other Canon Reds purveyors, aspire to rise above those regional and home video filmmakers of old to create films in other genres besides the aforementioned horror and the low-budget auteurs’ second favorite genre: the cheap-to-make rom-com, such as Edward Burns and his industry breakthrough with 1995’s The Brothers McMullen, from those Fine Line Features, Fox Searchlight and Miramax glory days (that he shot for $30,000 and cleared $10 million in box office).
So, yes. Michael Matteo Rossi is ambitious. To a fault? Eh, maybe those James Dalton-opinions down at the roadhouse vary in the eyes of the Brad Wesleys of critical divide. Moi? I see no reason to compose discouraging reviews. (Ugh, again with the length complaints: the one hour thirty-six minutes of Shadows is short compared to most indie-streamers where directors are their own worst editors.) So, yes, I cut a wide berth (see Nigel the Psychopath, as an example) — that I would never give to a major studio film: those major leaguers know better than the shaggin’ flies guys down in Triple A (I hated Last Man Standing and John McClane seeks not my pity).
As I spoke with Rossi and actor Chris Levine when their previous film, the John McTiernan-aspiring The Handler, was released, they enthusiastically spoke of their next film, Shadows — and mentioned their joint admiration of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Michael Mann’s Thief.
Does that mean I should critically compare Rossi’s works to either of the those stellar films? No. Absolutely not. What Rossi’s mention of his cinematic inspirations provides this critic is a critical embellishment to the film’s IMDb-posted logline: I simply now know what to expect as the 1s and 0s formulate images on my lap top. As with Michael Matteo Rossi’s The Handler serving as his homage-throwback to ’80s and ’90s action films, Shadows is his cinematic tip-o’-the-hat to the crazed flux of ’90s gangster films — films rife with the expected Shakespearian-to-Dashiell Hammett noirish twists and betrayals.
So, with that being said: My critical barometer, here, is not Scorsese or Mann, but, when thinking back to Quentin Tarantino serving as a secondary inspiration to those Miramax-gangster ’90s: his film, Reservoir Dogs. Well, more accurately: Rob Weiss’s low-budgeted, Tarantino-cobbled Amongst Friends, Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn, and Troy Duffy’s Boondock Saints. But make no mistake about it: Rossi is not a filmmaker who cuts off one’s nose to spite one’s face — as did that “Tarantinoesque” ego-destroying triumvirate. However, unlike those three films, okay, well, maybe not Boondock Saints, Shadows is not your typical indie streamer: it is not only a well-shot film: the sharp cinematography is supported by solid, fluid editing giving it, well, the Scorsese-Mann quality on-a-budget to which it strives.
I immediately — and pleasantly — noticed Rossi smartly brought back the fine Rachel Alig, Tyrone Magnus and Chris Levine (The Ice Cream Stop, No Way Out) from The Handler for his cast. He then ups the game with the casting of long-suffering indie actress Krista Allen, who parlayed her indie film roles (speaking of the shot-on-phone genre: the pretty fine Case 347) and under-five and guest starring television roles (Diagnosis Murder to CSI: Crime Scene Investigations to Hawaii Five-O) to a featured, 77-episode role in CBS-TV’s long-running daytime drama, The Bold and the Beautiful. Another welcomed actor to the cast is Rahart Adams from Nicklelodon’s Every Witch Way, (as well as Pacific Rim: Uprising) in an adult film role, given a chance to shine as our well-meaning but flawed Othello. Fans of FX’s Sons of Anarchy and Mayans M.C. will also notice David Labarva, fine here as the crazed, drug-manufacturing Nicolas. Then there’s Jazsmin Lewis of the Ice Cube-starring Barbershop franchise, in support, as Shonda, who cares for Jewel and a stable of hookers.
The streaming incentive, here, of course, is, well . . . we wish Australian icon Vernon “The Wez” Wells was here in more than just-a-name-on-the-box starring role, à la the aforementioned Bruce Willis, or Eric Roberts and Nic Cage (we are forever his bitch), but we do get a little bit more of Francis Capra — yes little Calogero in the Scorsesesque A Bronx Tale.
As with the aforementioned Amongst Friends, Rahart Adams is Cody: another troubled soul from a broken family hoping to break free of Jewel (Krista Allen), his crack-addicted prostitute mom, by working at the only good-paying job a foster care-dumped kid can get: as a low-level drug dealer. The modernized, Shakespearean proceedings — as they usually do in these films — goes to shite when Cody unknowingly buys a batch of a new designer drug for a quick mark-up resell — only to discover the drugs are part of a cache stolen from our in-residence Iago, Nicolas. And — as things usually do in these films — gets worse when our femme fatale Desdemona, aka Michelle (Rachel Alig), from Cody’s mom’s stable of call girls, unwittingly drags him into a multiple homicide.
Now Cody and Michelle are on the run from Nicolas’s right-hand psycho, Axel (a very adult-fine Francis Capra), who takes a scored earth approach to his profession: no survivors — including Vernon Wells’s prostitute-addicted lowlife, Cliff. Cody and Michelle’s savior comes in the form of Eric Etebari (The Lincoln Lawyer and TV’s NCIS: Los Angeles) packing the Robert Forster-cool as the salvation-seeking cartel hitman, Dean.
In the end, Rossi, as he did with The Handler, handles the drama-to-action ratio with a Scorsese-Mann aplomb. So much so that those pesky digital blood n’ bullets sticklers will overlook those digital effects. We will just have to wait and see if Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sticks to his publicity-driven bluster to never use “real guns” on sets, again, and he ups digital gun effects and squibs to the point where we can no longer tell the difference. Hello money: here’s the mouth.
So, until The Rock delivers: Michael Matteo Rossi delivers as he keeps getting better at the craft.
After watching and reviewing The Handler, Rossi provided me with a link-copy of his previous, third film, 2019’s The Chase (his freshman and sophomore features — amid his twelve shorts — are 2013’s Misogynist and 2017’s Sable). While The Chase is a commendable effort, The Handler is certainly the more ambitious, superior effort. And Shadows — thanks to great casting with actors bringing their A-games — trumps both of those films. I believe, once his next film, the also-starring Vernon Wells The Sweepers drops come September 2022, Michael Matteo Rossi will begin to receive mainstream, major studio notice as did his digital cousins Prince Bagdasarian (Abducted) and Steven C. Miller (First Kill). In fact, like Ryan Coogler before him: I see Michael Matteo Rossi creating that film — one that will win “Top Audience” and “Grand Jury” awards at the Sundance Film Festival where he will find himself called out of the dark, indie shadows to the sun-kissed majors.
It’s all about, not naysaying, but seeing the potential in the indie filmmaker. And Michael Matteo Rossi’s day in the sun is on the horizon and ready to break the dawn.
Shadows will be released to VOD and digital streaming on May 6th by Acort International Pictures (the team behind Clinton Road). The studio’s page for the film will lead you the film’s Facebook and Twitter pages to follow, as well as an Action-Flix interview with Michael Matteo Rossi and Deadline interview with actor Rahart Adams.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies (links to a truncated teaser-listing of his reviews).
Based on the comic book Corrective Measures by Grant Chastain, this movie was directed and written by Sean O’Reilly, who is the owner and operator of the comic book company Arcana Studio.
The majority of filming took place in Vancouver, Canada.– except for a day of shooting in Atlanta, GA with Bruce Willis, who plays the not-in-general population criminal Julius “The Lobe” Loeb.
San Tiburon is a super prison — literally, for supervillains — created in the wake of an accident caused by a company that now, ever so conveniently, runs the prison. Diego Diaz (Brennan Mejia) is the new inmate who gets in over his head when he protects Loeb from the vigilante Payback (Dan Payne, who was Dollar Bill in Watchmen) and earns the ire of Overseer Devlin (Michael Rooker, chewing scenery and not caring in between convention appearances).
Tom Cavanagh, from Ed and the Reverse Flash from the TV show, is the best part of this movie, playing The Conductor, an inmate who shows the empathic Diego how to survive. Daniel Cudmore, who was Colossus in the Brya Singer-era X-Men movies is in this as Diamond Jim, while Kat Ruston, Kevin Zegers and Hayley Sales make up the support staff of the not-unlike Belle Reve prison.
I really wanted to like this. I understand that Willis was limited and therefore, his performance comes off as weary instead of Hannibal Lecter, guiding the riot from solitary confinement. This movie also pulls a The Astrologer by having its wildest idea — a Phantom Zone that takes the Christian idea of Limbo and applies it to solitary confinement — be dashed off and forgotten just like the window to the galaxy that Craig Marcus Alexander shows off to his accountant. It does, however, have the best way to handle Willis. When taken off into solitary at the end, wearing a power negating helmet that looks like Xorn from the X-Men, they cover his face — it’s probably not even him and the body double used in some shots — they just ADR his voice over a mouth that doesn’t move. The Italian exploitation industry would be proud.
After being sent to Abraham House, a sinister religious retreat, Emma (Meredith Mohler) — who is pregnant — and Jackson (Lewis Hines) — who is gay — must escape and save their mother Tammy (Keni Bounds) from their stepfather Robbie (Jeff Buchwald).
Jackson wants desperately to make his mother happy, even trying in the past to get along with his abusive stepfather while Emma is always a rebel. Now under the watchful eye of Mary Esther (Jo-Ann Robinson), a religious fanatic who rules the house as she sees the Good News, Jackson agrees to pray away his homosexuality while Emma looks for a way out.
Director and writer Christopher Wesley Moore also made Triggered, which I really enjoyed. This slasher has its heart in the better stalk and slice movies of the past while using the politics and religion of today to create a story that has resonance. It does a lot with not much budget, including no small amount of blood as the film moves toward its conclusion.
It’s so frightening because I honestly believe that it could happen. Conversion therapy is insidious and I honestly feel that every day we inch closer toward an American Taliban.
Children of Sin is available on Amazon Prime. You can learn more on the official Facebook page.
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