Written by Savannah Lucas, this is the sequel to Scariest Monsters In America, using much of the same crew and talking heads to track down the most fearsome creatures in the world.
The monsters include werewolves, the Japanese collection of skeletons called Gashadokuro, the Greek serpent giants known as the Typhon, evil spiders called J’ba Fofi, the wendigo, vampires, Kelpies, the Pontianak, the Mare, Baba Yaga, the West African Ninka Nanka, the Bunyip, the Mongolian Death Worm, mummies and zombies.
If you’re read a lot about these monsters, you’re not going to learn much new. But if you have an obsessive desire to watch everything about monsters — like little kid Sam — then this will definitely be something you love. I can argue the list and placement, but watching things about monsters can’t help but be fun.
Also, I totally need to get on whatever it takes to be a talking head in one of these, because I want to get paid for talking about the Lambton Worm, the Kirtland, Ohio Melon Heads and the Hopkinsville Goblins. How do we make that happen?
Of all the Tubi originals that I’ve watched on the site, Surprise got some of the most comments. As the movie ended, David Gamble (Will Coleman) had paid for someone to kill his best friend Greg (Lemastor Spratling), who he believed had been having sex with his wife Jenna (NuNu Thurman).
Surprise 2 begins with David in the hospital after falling and hitting his head. He learns that Greg is in the same emergency room, barely alive after being shot. This takes place in what seems to be the other dimension of a hospital, where time seemingly has no meaning and you exist in a world of nothing that resembles sleep.
As David tries to understand why he tried to kill his best friend, the man he hired remains in the hospital, trying to finish the murder. Detectives Johnson (Grover McCants) and Rogers (DeJuan Ford) are also there, trying to figure out just how Greg got shot.
Yet not all that long into the movie, David is back to his old ways, wondering why his wife is so involved with Greg. She’s also worried about him as guilt has made him even more anxious than he was when he decided to kill his best friend.
Directed by Rockey Black and Jhayla Mosley, who also wrote the film, this movie finds David making just as many mistakes as the cops start questioning him. The killer gets caught and then is killed in his cell, but that doesn’t mean that our protagonist is in the clear. Not by a longshot.
So many of the responses to the last movie were upset by how it ended. I don’t want to spoil this one for you, but it also has an ending that isn’t an ending. It looks like Surprise 3 is coming. I’ll be ready. Will you? What did you think of this movie?
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Empire V plays on Wednesday, October 18. You can learn more about this movie on the official site.
Run and find this movie.
Based on a novel by Russia’s leading contemporary writer Victor Pelevin, Empire V is one of the wildest movies I’ve seen since, well, ever.
I honestly haven’t seen a more original vampire movie in my life. The sell copy claims that it’s “a dark satire on contemporary culture and global capitalism and a universal coming of age story of an average young man challenged by a Faustian gift of power and knowledge, forced to make his way in a post-moral world.”
But man, it’s so big in scope that I just couldn’t believe it.
In this universe, vampires are the Fifth Empire, the ruling class of the world, the elite that we all aspire to be. They even created mankind from apes. But the don’t feed on us. Well, not our bodies. Instead, they seek bablos, the state of money created by the human monetary gland that is the very seal of human vitality. No one knows this and vampires exist through glamour that makes people feel inferior and spend more money, while they also spread disinformation that obscures what the world is truly about.
Roman (Pavel Tabakov) is a normal twenty-something living at home and unloading trucks when grafitti promises an escape from being poor. This takes him to the mansion of Brahma (Vladimir Epifantsev), who turns him into a vampire — using The Tongue, which takes one drop of blood — and gives him his estate.
He’s trained for this new life by Loki (Bronislav Vinogrodskiy and discovers that clear liquids of famous people can be ingested to learn their skills, such as a moment where he learns to drive like Steve McQueen. Roman soon becomes Rama II and falls for a fellow young vamp, Hera (Taya Radchenko), while battling his nemesis Mithra VI (Oxxxymirin).
There’s a lot to love here, including a deep dive into the history of this universe, the fact that vampires fund all the movies made about them so that humans never know who they are, a goddess named Ishtar (Vera Alentova) that appears in CGI form and a climatic battle in the form of poetry.
You have to love a movie that upsets the government so much that Russia banned it. This reminds me of the energy that I felt when I first saw Nightwatch. Even more exciting, this feels like only the beginning of this story. Director Victor Ginzburg, who wrote this with Pelevin, has created something incredible.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. What You Wish For played on Thursday, October 12.
Ryan (Nick Stahl) has left the boring life of working in a chain hotel kitchen to travel to the rainforests of Latin America and meet up with his culinary school classmate Jack (Brian Groh). It may not have been by choice that Ryan has left his job, as he’s run up some bad debts and has someone even worse after him.
Jack is living the life that Ryan always wanted. So when his friend disappears and gives him the chance to take over his life — and his money and status — well, sign Ryan up. The problem? Jack wasn’t exactly working his dream position. Now, Ryan has all of his problems.
Directed and written by Nicholas Tomnay, this finds Ryan working for some of the most horrific rich people ever, lorded over by their employee Imogene (Tamsin Topolski), and forced to stay one step ahead of both their frightening culinary demands and the police who are looking for the real Jack, who by the way hung himself this morning.
Ryan always wanted to make a meal more exciting than roasted chicken. This meal is way more interesting — and maybe final — than any he imagined. What an interesting idea for a film and one that really delivers.
The press information for director Charles Band’s AIMEE: The Visitor proclaims that “This is the first film in history to feature a character not portrayed by an actor or designed using digital special effects, but entirely created using modern A.I. technology.” With the Hollywood strikes occurring partially because of studios considering replacing writers and actors with AI, the film drops at an interesting time.
The core of this cautionary fable is nothing new: computer technology becomes self-aware and attempts to destroy the life of the person(s) using it. In this case, Scott Keyes (Dallas Schaefer) is a supposedly high-end computer programmer who makes a lot of money from corporate espionage, yet he is holed up in the type of questionable apartment for which cinematic hackers are known and stays inside watching porn and eating fast food when not doing his shady work. He rents out space in the building to brother-and-sister hacker duo Hunter (Felix Merback) and Gazelle (Faith West), who help him in his nefarious deeds. And for some reason, Gazelle is crushed out on the misanthropic Scott.
Enter AIMEE, a beautiful (of course) AI creation who can help Scott however he wishes — professionally or personally, which leads to a fantasy three-way sex scene and a jealous rivalry between AIMEE and Gazelle. All manner of deadly hijinks ensue, with FBI agents and a pet dog involved in the mix along with our main three human protagonists.
As a Full Moon Feature, the special effects are on the low budget side of things, and the AIMEE effects should relieve most human actors of any worries about AI taking their places soon. The performances are fine, with the main cast members not treading into scenery-chewing territory.
If you’re in the mood for a The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Black Mirror style of “beware technology” science fiction tale combined with erotic thriller elements, AIMEE: The Visitor should have what you crave.
Somewhere in Maine, Julie (Angelina Danielle Cama) has grown up with foster parents Todd (Sean Whalen) and Janelle (Maria Olsen), but at this point, she can’t wait until she’s eighteen. Despite how close she is to being free, she keeps running away from home, which alerts a social worker named Rebecca (Kaiti Wallen) to her case.
The supernatural part of this story — the one that ties it into the flashback that opens the film — is that Julie has found a pendant and a secret Viking burial ground that holds Frey (Yan Birch), a monstrous killing machine that has been buried alive for hundreds of years. She feels for the creature and hides it in a shed, bringing it food when she can. But as you can imagine, that won’t be enough and he’s soon feeding on her neighbors.
Beneath Us All mixes up social issues, Rebecca’s workaholic nature and the growing vampiric bond between Frey and Julie, as well as the money issues that are getting to Todd and Janelle. At the same time, Detective Booker (Harley Wallen) is investigating the murders that keep growing and soon destroy two of the foster kids Sarah and Erica (Hanna and Emilia Wallen). Now only Stephen (Malachi Myles) is left and he’s fearing for his life while his foster parents refuse to leave their refuge.
This movie touches on things without hitting you over the head with them, like how Todd and Janelle have had so many problems yet continue to foster kids for fifteen years. Do they love them? Does it make them happy? The film is ambiguous in the right way, the way that life can be at times. The fact that natural nurturer Julie is turned to the side of Frey also feels that way. It’s the first time she’s had power and she’s going to use it.
The entire Wallen family seems to have put their lives into this movie, as Harley directed from a script by Bret Miller. I’ve enjoyed past movies I’ve seen by the director (Ash and Bone,Tale of Tails, A Bennett Song Holiday) but this is the most complete and intelligent work I’ve seen from him yet.
Alicia Seaborne (Nichelle Hines) has come to South Carolina to interview Alex Murdaugh (Chris McGarry) as he’s in jail awaiting trial for the deaths of his wife Maggie (Amy Parrish) and son Paul (Joshua Whichard) in this new Tubi original. I’m happy that this exists because one of the things that I miss from the 70s and 80s made-for-TV movies are ripped from the headlines stories that are actual movies and not just episodes of Dateline or 20/20.
A lot of true crime gets watched in our home, so I know the Murdaugh case quite well. Maggie and Paul were found dead at the family’s home on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh was from a legendary South Carolina family of attorneys who ran the town. Three generations served consecutively as circuit solicitors for South Carolina’s 14th judicial district between 1920 and 2006. This led to the five-county district to be renamed Murdaugh Country by frustrated citizens.
The last generation has been charged with murder, wrongful death, corruption, fraud, witness intimidation, theft, and drug and alcohol-related charges, including Paul being party to a fatal boat accident that he was never punished for and the murders. Alex was also accused of embezzlement from his law firm, taking millions from locals and blaming it all on a drug addiction. There’s also the murder of nursing student Stephen Smith, who may have been killed by Alex’s son Buster, and the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who slipped, fell and died with no coroner investigation, no death certificate and a lack of a death certificate.
Alex’s cousin Curtis Edward Smith also conspired with him to shoot him on a country road so that Buster would get the insurance money.
Jason Winn, who directed this, also was behind the Tubi original Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl. If you know the story — if you have watched any true crime stories at all you are beyond in deep — this has everything that you expect with the characters actually being in a story and not just a re-enactment. It also adds Charlie Boggs (Aaron Gillespie), a prisoner whose family was taken advantage of by Alex and who is trying to murder him while they are in the same prison. As far as I know, he’s not an actual person and someone the movie has made to be everyone that got screwed over by Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick, the family law group.
Who am I fooling with? If you know about the Murdaughs, you already watched this movie.
Gigi (Lucy Barrett) never knew her mother or father, raising herself with the help of her roommate and longtime best friend Rachel (Phoenix Best). She makes most of her money running scams, like stealing video games and selling them to kids whose parents don’t allow them to get them.
This all changes when she figures out that her mother might be Linda (Tiffany Kyle), the owner of Fusefire, the biggest video game company in the world. But to get closer to her mother, she has to lie and scheme and get close to her assistant Blair (Jillian Kinsey) and deal with the sexual threats of her stepbrother Vincent (Brandon Mitchell).
Directed by Tamar Halpern (Her Affair to Die For), this movie is not The Assistant, which is also a Tubi original. It does have Gigi going all out to get revenge, as well as discussion of video games that feels like your grandmother wrote it: “The touch screen controls are now more intuitive.” as well as “No one watches the cut scenes.” Someone spent five minutes on Reddit for that line.
Moriah (Karen Obilom) is in a super secret love affair with a famous basketball player for the Demon Dogs named George Carson (Sterling Sulieman). Of course, this being a Tubi movie, things probably won’t work out all that great for her.
She goes to his house for a party with her friend Rachel (Brianna Butler) and as she’s trying to find the bathroom, he tries to make out with her, right after talking about his wife and charity. Moriah decides that she should concentrate on work but all she can think about is getting slam dunked.
She signs the NDA he asks for and their affair starts, just in time for a man (David Andrew Nash) to ask where his daughter Kesha is. Bodyguard Bruno (Laith Wallschleger) gets them out of the drama and they’re off to a hotel deck to bang down low and, as the title says, go out of bounds. But is that George’s wife stalking them and getting photos from Bruno?
Oh yes. Crystal (Maxie McClintock) catches up with her in a clothing store and takes her to lunch. It seems friendly yet is laced with anger. As you can only imagine, by the end, she’s getting screwed up by drug-filled orange juice and husband and wife are into some swinging weirdness. That’s why I come to Tubi movies. For this.
Charlie (Kathleen Kenny) is a remote helpline volunteer who comes into the grip of The Gentleman, a sinister being that uses the sound of a crying baby to lure people into his destructive embrace. One night, while home alone, she realizes that she is anything but when she hears an infant outside her home.
Directed by Colton Tran and written by Luke Genton — who also worked on the horror film Snow Falls together — Sorry, Charlie was based on a true story of a man who used recordings of children to get women to leave their houses.
Nearly nine months ago, Charlie was raped by someone — on Halloween — who left her pregnant. Now, she tries to help others from her home, a place she rarely leaves if only to go to the doctor and to tend to her garden. As for the house, it was her grandmother’s and her pregnancy doesn’t leave her much energy to fix it up any further than she got before the attack. But for now, she’s surviving. Then the calls start, calls that sound so much like the man who assaulted her. And then, The Gentleman shows up.
Sorry, Charlie may seem to be made in the cloak of the slasher, but it’s more about grief, adjusting after a horrific event and trying to move past it. We don’t all get to so violently deal with our trauma, but Charlie sure does.
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