The sequel to What the Waters Left Behind takes place in the bizarre city of Epecuén. Director Nicolás Onetti (who made the original with his brother Luciano, who composed the film’s music; they also made Abrakadabra, Francescaand The 100 Candles Game together) and writer Camilo Zaffora founded the rock band The Ravens.
Drummer Billy Bob (Matías Desiderio) is the one they all can’t stand, and he’s already slept with a groupie named Carla (Magui Bravi), who asks for a ride home and promises a barbecue. Singer and bassist Jane (Clara Kovacic), guitarist Mark (Juan Pablo Bishel, his girlfriend Sophie (Eugenia Rigón) and their manager Javi (Agustin Olcese) are already sick of their bandmate, but follow him and, as you can imagine, this becomes another cover version of the Sawyer Family’s Greatest Hits. The tension within the band is palpable, adding an intriguing layer to the narrative.
Like the first movie, the real star is Epecuén, a former spa that spent thirty years submerged before the waters rolled back and left a desert in their wake. It looks like the end of the world and makes the movie feel way more significant than it is.
Carla has a grandfather named Tadeo (Mario Alarcón), who makes the best barbecue. However, it’s for him and his family — Antonio (Germán Baudino), Chimango (Chucho Fernández) and Tito (David Michigan)—and it’s going to be anything but locally sourced. Instead, the Ravens are on the menu and may never escape the final stop on their tour.
The first movie seemed to be trying to remake Tobe Hooper’s classic, and this one is more of the same. But hey—it’s got a great location, loud and proud of its gore, and has an intriguing idea of an arguing virus that passes through the band and the family. I believe the Onettis have something great in them someday soon. Their potential is evident, leaving me hopeful for their future projects.
Michael Dupret directed and wrote the 2019 short #No_Filter, in which a girl named Anna tries new Instagram filters that bring the supernatural into her life*.
Now, he’s made this full-length movie. It’s from Belgium, but it’s in English and it won’t make you think it’s a foreign film.
You know this movie is such a surprise and delight. I loved every minute of it because I was so sure it was going to be a streaming J-horror rip-off. Instead, it is totally a movie that you would have rented at the store in the 1990s, which is a high compliment.
Anna in Bali (screen name @anna_withaA) is our heroine, played by Hannah Mciver. She’s on vacation with her family in Bali, where she catches up with her favorite influencer, Scary Scott (screen name @scare_scott), played by Samuel Van der Zwalmen.
He has a challenge where she has to make his friends happy — his scallowers — in one minute while trying to frighten him. Anna is really good at putting on a mask and sneaking up on him. He tells her it reminds him of Samara from The Ring, but she has no idea who that is. He’s nonplussed — even influencers are having younger people let them down with their lack of pop culture education these days — but impressed with her.
Here’s the only issue I have with the film. It makes an awkward cut here to Scott editing his videos and getting stalked, getting messages where he’s stabbing himself in the neck. That video comes true, and we cut to the opening credits.
It’d be nice to know how quickly things got spooky, but the film fixes this later, so stay tuned.
Cut to Anna’s bedroom and a pop punk song, where we learn she’s become popular in school thanks to her video of Scary Scott’s Scary Pic Challenge. A quick conversation shows how quickly today’s teens have moved past Mary Black-style urban legends, saying that even if you only scare yourself or your friends, it doesn’t matter unless it’s online. “If you can’t share it, it doesn’t exist,” Anna tells them.
She’s pretty philosophical, even telling her teacher Miss Potts (Dianne Weller), “Cicero said that if the face is the mirror of the mind, the eyes are its interpreters,” as she’s confronted about the honesty of social media.
Anna feels compelled to keep up her scare videos on social media, putting on face paint to scare her best friend Lauren (screen name @lau_reignn), played by Jasmine Daoud. Together, they work to make filters that distort photos and make them so frightening that they make people physically sick.
But things have to get dark at some point, right?
Jason (Kassim Meesters) is another streamer who is stalking Anna. They both record live videos simultaneously. Are all of these kids streaming content? Who is watching it?
Last year, Jason got kicked out of school because he kept sending dick pics to every girl and went after Lauren, who broke his nose. He’s trying to frighten Lauren by blasting loud music in her driveway. She comes outside only to find he’s dead in the trunk and has no eyes. Yet when she shares the footage with Lauren, all her friend sees is her trying to seduce Jason. This is where the film starts to deal with Anna becoming an unreliable narrator, as she has no idea if things happening to her are real or not, such as when she tries to confide in Lauren and learns that her best friend is hanging out with Mina(Priya Blackburn), the girl who bullied her, which sends her off the deep end. All she has left are her fans online, and many refuse to support her, saying she brought this on herself.
Within the phone, there’s now a Dark Anna, complete with black eyes, who does things like smash her fingers and stab them to frighten our heroine. She also shares photos of Lauren dead in the gym, which causes a further rift between the two friends.
That’s when Lauren invites over Tyler (Reiky de Valk), a guy she has a crush on, who oddly asks to take a shower at her place before she comes on way too strong. She breaks the tension between them by smashing a beer bottle in her hand. He leaves but then starts texting her photos in the bathtub, telling her to come upstairs. As she walks up the steps, Anna looks at herself on the phone, and there’s a fantastic camera effect as the black bars on each side of the phone slide out, and the image of Anna is replaced by her darker self, which goes upstairs and decimates Tyler.
Anna tries to escape from her demonic self. As she watches a streamer named silent_jill, she discovers that a surf influencer in Bali killed all of his friends and had the same black eyes. The supernatural influencer explains that in Bali, demons believe in a balance of light and darkness. The only way to stop the demon is purification by fire, a phrase which she shouts and stares directly at Anna through the screen.
That’s when we see a video of Scott and Anna looking at a piece of mirrored glass in a Bali temple, which is how she got possessed. This is broken by her parents calling in a panic as they make their way to the hospital, Lauren calling with the news that Scott’s body has been found, Mina dying on Facetime and Anna screaming that everyone has to delete all of their social media and burn their phones, never logging on to their accounts ever again, which is a form of death for influencers.
As her mother attempts to come back and settle her, Anna loses her mind completely — there’s another great shot in here where the Dark Anna remains in the middle of a large mirror while four small mirrors show Anna running in four different directors — and stabs her mother through the chest. She then knocks herself out by repeatedly slamming a door into her face.
When Lauren comes to save her, she can’t find her friend. Instead, she sees a camera set up in the bedroom. Looking at the videos, she can see Dark Anna, who grabs her by the hand and brings her into the makeup tutorial. There, she slices her throat and combines it with egg whites, honey and avocado. She smears her face with the mixture and then starts to eat it.
Lauren starts to close down all her accounts as she reflects on social media, saying there are two people in every selfie: One you look like and the other you really are. In response, the demonic form of her starts to headbutt from inside the monitor and threatens to break out. Anna burns all of her tech in a barrel, but at the last moment, shepauses to look at her face on the screen and admire herself.
Over the credits, other influencers begin to have black eyes.
No Filter is so much better than it has any right to be. In a year of influencer horror that barely makes the mark, it has something to say, says it well and delivers actual horror — and gore, too! — in a tense final act. It’s probably the best movie I’ve seen as a Tubi original.
*It’s similar to another short, Nakia Secrest’s Party Make Up by Nikki.
After spending eight years in prison without any incidents, Emon, a former elite soldier portrayed by Brandon Vera—known for being the ONE Heavyweight Champion and the 2005 WEC Heavyweight Grand Prix Champion—finally regains his freedom. Emon’s main objective is to reconnect with his estranged wife, Sheryl (played by Mary Jean Lastimosa), and their young daughter, Jane (Freya Fury Montierro). However, upon his release, he quickly realizes that the world he once knew has been dramatically altered by a terrifying virus that has turned much of the population into ruthless, flesh-eating zombies.
As Emon navigates this new and perilous environment, he is relentlessly pursued by swarms of the undead. The urban landscape is fraught with danger, and Emon must utilize his extensive military training and combat skills to survive. His journey is fueled by an overwhelming determination to rescue his family and bring them to safety.
The film masterfully showcases Vera’s abilities and charisma, suggesting a bright future for him in the action movie genre. Directed by Joey De Guzman and skillfully written by Ays De Guzman, Day Zero is a gripping and intense thrill ride from beginning to end. The climax of the film builds to an epic confrontation within a crumbling apartment complex in the Philippines, where Emon faces off against a nearly overwhelming horde of undead. With each encounter, he fights valiantly, showcasing his strength and resilience as he strives to protect his loved ones.
Day Zero offers an adrenaline-pumping experience filled with heart-pounding action and suspense. It’s a must-watch for fans of the zombie genre, combining elements of survival, family and the human spirit’s enduring will to protect those we love.
“Day Zero” is available on digital platforms, DVD and Blu-ray through Well Go USA Entertainment.
Directed and written by Yosuke Goto, Bldg. N is based on actual events that happened in a Gifu Prefecture apartment complex in 2000.
Shiori (Minori Hagiwara) is a college student that has a fear of death known as thanatophobia which keeps her from sleeping but also haunts her every waking moment. To try and escape her constant depression, she joins her ex-boyfriend Keita (Yuki Kura) and his current girlfriend Maho (Kasumi Yamaya) to film a rural housing plan where rumors of ghostly activities have been reported.
The three college students lie and explain that they are looking for a place to live. Invited to a welcome party, they learn that the building’s residents live with ghosts quite literally. As their leader Kanako (Mariko Tsutsui) explains, that means trying to understand them. Then someone runs over a rail and kills themself.
This would be the time to leave.
So you end up with a death cult meeting up with a girl whose fear of death leads her to be irrational about everything. While she’s also quite tiny, she’s also a killing machine. And while the film eventually becomes a more standard J-horror movie than the opening may promise and its characters make some of the dumbest decisions ever, at least Hagiwara is great as the lead and it looks interesting.
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
Sri Asih was created in 1953 by RA Kosasih, the father of Indonesian comic books. According to the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe Wiki, this is her origin: “Nani Wijaya, is the daughter of a wealthy family, is a bead of Goddess Sri from the Kahyangan Kingdom. As an adult, Nani works as an agent of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation to defend truth & justice. However, when he struggles, Nani can transform herself into Sri Asih by translating “Goddess Asih!”” This allows her to access her powers as the reincarnation of Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice and fertility still worshiped in Java, Bali, and Lombok islands.
Her powers include strength, speed, durability, flight, duplication, a healing factory and the ability to grow in size. As a BCI agent, she already had martial arts and detective skills, adding to her superhuman powers.
Sri Asih was such a popular character that her first movie, directed by Tan Sing Hwat and Turino Djunaedy, was made a year after her debut. Unfortunately, the first superhero movie made in Indonesia is lost.
This version of Sri Asih is the second installment of the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe, a series of superhero films based on more than 500 comic book characters in the library of Indonesian publishing company Bumilangit, which started with 2019’s Gundala.
Directed by Upi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gundala director Joko Anwar, this tells the story of the third Sri Asih, who is Alana at the start of the movie (Pevita Pearce). She’s been a fighter for her entire life and had to hold back the rage inside her. That makes sense, as she was nearly killed by the volcano that made her an orphan when she was just an infant.
After being raised by a female martial artist, she becomes an MMA fighter in her adulthood, which brings her into the cage against the privileged Mateo (Randy Pangalila). By the end, she will have to battle one of the top five villains of the BCU — the five commanders of the Goddess of Fire — known as Evil Spirit.
I may not know these characters at all, but I think it’s awesome that other cultures are attempting to leverage their own comic book mythologies. That’s why I hate that people talk down on comic book movies—they are no different than the myths of any culture throughout time—and translate them to the screen and give themselves representation.
This might not have the budget of a Marvel movie, but the fights look better, and the CGI looks just as good. At the end of this movie, there’s even a post-credits cameo. Much like Sri Asih showed up at the end of Gundala, Mandala appears briefly.
For those of us in the U.S., Shout! Factory has the rights to this and will release it this year. Check it out when you can because it’s such an incredible opportunity to learn about the heroes of other places and see them in action.. The series
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
The moments that work in Terrifier are the ones without the gore. Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is just walking with a bag of glass, and there are moments in the pizza shop and him on that bike. The disquiet of those moments was so upsetting that I was excited to see where the next movie would go.
Directed, written, edited and produced by Damien Leone, this takes place a year after the first movie. It’s Halloween again, and Art has returned from the dead, killing the coroner, inspecting his body, and seeing The Little Pale Girl, an entity that follows him throughout the movie.
Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) are obsessed with the drawings in their dead father’s sketchbook. While Sienna takes to the angel whose costume she is making for a party, Jonathan loves the pictures of Art and his victims. Their father died of brain cancer, which they claim led to the visions inside his books; that night, a fire wipes out Sienna’s costume, but her sword—a gift from her father—remains.
When she goes to a costume shop to rebuild her wings, Sienna has a panic attack instead of talking to her friends Allie (Casey Hartnett) and Brooke (Kailey Hyman) about Art the Clown’s victim, Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi, the final girl of the original). She has a nervous breakdown on live TV and murders talk show host Monica Brown.
By day, Jonathan watches Art and The Little Pale Girl play with a dead opossum while Art kills the costume store owner, Allie and Allie’s mother at night. That sentence in no way explains just how far these murder scenes go, some of which feel like they descend into Herschell Gordon Lewis-level gore porn for laughs.
Jonathan shows Sienna and their mother, Barbara (Sarah Voight), the sketchbook, as he has learned that The Little Pale Girl was Art’s first victim, Emily Crane. Jonathan believes their father knew how to stop Art, but his mother destroys the books and slaps him around. There is no need for revenge, as she dies moments later at the hands of Art, who takes the sword and Jonathan.
After a midnight party where Brooke doses Sienna with MDMA, our heroine is lured to the abandoned The Terrifier amusement park ride. There, she is killed by Art and resurrected by an unseen force before killing the clown numerous times to save her brother. One final time, she uses the sword to cut off Art’s head, which is taken by The Little Pale Girl. Moments later, Victoria Heyes gives birth to the living head inside the mental home, setting up the third movie.
Somehow, on a budget of $250,000, this movie made $16.1 million. There was hardly an ad campaign, either. The idea that a film that caused people to pass out and puke definitely had some allure.
I also have no idea why this movie is 2 hours and 18 minutes long, but 15-year-old me would have loved it. 51-year-old me thinks this movie is too long but recognizes that people tend to want to keep playing loud and fast when you’re playing loud and fast. I wish there had never been any information on Art, where he came from, or that he had any special powers, but I’m not making this movie. I’m just watching it. And any movie that has a comedy moment where a killer clown shreds a person and then reappears to pour bleach and salt on them has transcended criticism and just exists on its own.
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
It’s pretty amazing to me that this movie exists, seeing as how Anthropophagus came out all the way back in 1980—and was spelled Antropophagus—and already has had several spiritual and unofficial sequels, like Absurd—which is closer to Halloween than D’Amato’s first film, which was released as The Grim Reaper in the U.S.*—and the German sort of sequel Anthropophagous 2000, which was made in 1999.
You don’t need to really know anything about the original to watch this.
The BIFFF website has a great line about this: “It ticks off all the boxes of Italian Z-grade trash cinema: an outrageously idiotic script, paper-thin and brain-dead female characters who are more likely to break out into a pillow fight than to engage in a scientific discussion on their thesis (we do hope the filmmakers have met actual women in real life), bad acting made worse by hilarious dubbing and such outlandish amounts of blood, guts, intestines, brain mush, baby removals and other such niceties that put Hostel to shame. In short: pure, unfiltered bad taste.”
A teacher named Nora (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Claudio Fragasso’s 2022 movie Karate Man) has assigned her students — Giulia (Jessica Pizzi, The Slaughter), Angela (Giuditta Niccoli), Diletta (Maria D’Ascanio), Betty (Chiara De Cristofaro), Sonia (Shaen Barletta), Cinizia (Valentina Capuano) and Isabel (Alessandra Pellegrino) — to an assignment that will help her thesis paper on the impact of isolation. She’s gotten the keys to a fallout shelter where numerous people have already died, asked the girls to not bring their phones, and everyone just goes along with this plot.
Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Alberto Buccolini) is hunting them all.
Antropophagus is best known for a scene where Klaus Wortman (George Eastman, who also co-wrote the script for the 1980 movie) tears a fetus out of Maggie (Serena Grandi) and eats it right on camera. For being a degenerate exploitation filmmaker, that film’s director, Joe D’Amato, waited until nearly the movie’s end. Here, it happens three minutes in.
Director Dario Germani started his career as a cinematographer (he’s still working as one, as he made Emanuelle’s Revenge with Carpanese last year, as well as the aforementioned Karate Man), and he understands that for this movie to work, the tunnels — the Bunker Soratte, Gallerie del Monte Soratte — that it takes place within have to be claustrophobic. There are some nice shots within this, as well as some gore — skin rolling off arms — that got close to disturbing me. Writer Lorenzo De Luca doesn’t do much to tie this to the original, and instead, it feels like it could easily be a ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes or Hostel.
Credit — or blame — for putting this together goes to Giovanni Paolucci. Yes, the same man who wrote Ark of the Sun God before writing and producing the last period of Bruno Mattei’s career (from Attrazione pericolosa — which starts Carpanese — to Zombies: The Beginning) and Dracula 3D.
I have to be honest. Yes, this movie is terrible, but if it was shot on film and made in 1980, the dubbing, bad acting and lack of story would not bother me. I wish the monster in this had an intimidating size and aura like George Eastman. The dubbing is so bad here that it made me love what I was watching. That said, I can only imagine someone who hasn’t made it through the assembled canon of D’Amato, Mattei and Fragasso would detest this movie.
*I can make this even more confusing by saying that Absurd was also released as Zombi 6 and Antropophagus as Zombi 7, but let me tell you, breaking down which movies are called what Zombi numbers will give you a migraine. Check out this article to learn more.
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
Tran Long, an influencer who uses his web show Memory of Murder to delve into actual crime scenes, weaves a complex web of interconnected narratives for his viewers. The movie unfolds with a man who killed his lover and his parents, another who broke into a jewelry store and then kills the family that owns it, and finally, a man trapped in gambling debts who tries to get an ex to help. When she refuses, he kills her. These stories, seemingly disparate, are intricately linked, leading to a compelling revelation.
Based on actual events, this movie honestly pulls no punches, with the last murder being incredibly grisly. This is an unsanitized view of crimes that men visit upon other men, unlike so much of reality-based true crime.
Vietnamese director Le Binh Giang, best known in America for his movie KFC, continues his exploration of the human psyche in Memory of Murder. This film continues his journey into the heart of darkness he started in KFC. By the end, we discover that Tran Long created his show to deal with his grief over his parents’ murder. All three stories are interconnected and point to who may be behind that crime.
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
A feature-length adaptation of “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” from V/H/S/2, this finds kids Gary (Dominic Mariche), Jack (Asher Grayson) and Miles (Ben Tector) being bullied by teens Billy (Calem MacDonald), Dallas (Isaiah Fortune) and Trish (Emma Vickers) with Gary’s sister Sam (Phoebe Rex) caught in the middle. You see, the kids love to backyard wrestle and make home movies, but Sam is growing up and it’s time for her to decide if she really wants a boyfriend. That said, Billy might not be the best pick.
It’s all a moot point, because on the night of a party gone wrong that the bad kids force Sam to throw, aliens attack and all extraterrestrial hell breaks loose.
Directed by Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun), who wrote the film with John Davies, this is a movie that’s gorier, weirder and more profane than it’s title would suggest. It also has characters that — other than Sam (Phoebe Rex) — are cookie cutter at best and annoying at worst. It feels like a mean spirited cliche of Spielberg-esque alien movies and while it looks great and has wonderful practical effects, I kept asking if there was more. The end feels so abrupt that you feel cheated; it doesn’t have to have a happy ending, but it just feels like the filmmakers ran out of ideas and time.
I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.
Starting with Carrie, Stephen King was adapted by more than fifty directors and eighty or more films and series were filmed. The beauty of King On Screen is that it brings together nearly every living director who worked on these films, including Tom Holland (The Langoliers, Thinner), Mick Garris (The Stand, Sleepwalkers), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), Taylor Hackford (Dolores Claiborne), Mike Flanagan (Dr. Sleep, Gerald’s Game), Mark Lester (Firestarter), Mikael Håfström (1408), Josh Boone (The Stand), Tom McLoughlin (Sometimes They Come Back), Lewis Teague (Cujo, Cat’s Eye), Fraser C. Heston (Needful Things), Craig R. Baxley (Storm of the Century, Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital), Mikael Salomon (Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King), Scott Hicks (Hearts In Atlantis), David Carson (Carrie 2002), John Harrison (Creepshow, Creepshow 2), Zak Hilditch (1922), Greg Nicotero (Shudder’s Creepshow), Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass), Tod Williams (Cell) and so many more.
Director Daphné Baiwir starts this with a sequence that takes you directly into nearly every one of King’s stories. If you love the author, you’ll have so much fun going back in and out of this scene to see how many references you can catch. My wife is a fan, so she was excited to see Jeffrey DeMunn show up, as he was in The Shawshank Redemption, Storm of the Century, The Green Mile and The Mist.
Don’t expect anyone to knock on any of these movies. Well, the movie likes The Shining TV movie more than Kubrick’s, but these are all friends of King. However, if you’re watching this, there’s a significant chance that you don’t have too many bad things to say about any Stephen King movies.
The part of this that I loved the most was the part about Tom Hanks, as Frank Darabont discussed how giving he is to everyone on set.
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