Directed and written by Nathan Blackwell, this film finds Marshall (Adam Rini) at the end of the world, deciding that he should bring together a group of friends and strangers — and his ex-wife Audrey (Megan Rini — to make the movie he never finished in high school.
How does everyone discover that the world will end? A voice in their head, giving them thirty days, as the simulation that is our reality is ending. That’s what makes Marshall look up his old friends Lance (Ryan Gaumont) and Arthur (Craig Curtis) to finally complete their science fiction movie in the face of a very science fiction reality.
This could be a dark film, yet it has so much heart — and joy in the power of movies — that I couldn’t help but love it. It seems like the making of this movie was the same labor of love as the film that Marshall puts together. A movie that finally gets him past his issues and has him grow up. Sure, it’s in time for the world to end, but I’d like to think everyone escapes because the movie ends before the world does.
The Last Movie Ever Made was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Les Hackel (James Marsters) is down on his luck. Maybe even worse when he wakes up to find that an explosive device has been implanted in his neck. Now, he must carry out heinous crimes in order to stay alive while trying to identify the mastermind ordering him to keep killing.
Also: This is a puppet movie.
Director and writer Evan Marlowe said, “We resolved (for some insane reason) to use only realistic lifelike hand puppets in actual settings, just like any other movie. No CGI backgrounds or actors wearing prosthetic makeup. This sort of thing has never been done. The Dark Crystal comes close, though there, the designers weren’t bound by the confines of reality. We’ve had a few incredibly skilled people helping out. Jeff Farley has been our lead puppet fabricator. Again, this kind of work isn’t common, so some amount of trial and error has been needed to find the balance of aesthetic, durability and function. Meaning, the heads need to look great on camera, hold up well under shooting environments that are often hostile,and let the puppeteer emote without too much effort. When it comes to the actual shoot, our puppeteer Danny Montooth lip syncs with each line, played on loop on my magical iPad until all the aspects (lighting, camera movement, mouth motion, eye line) are just right. Once I’ve got the footage, I edit it up and then our visual effects guy John Sellings smooths out any problems. When a scene is done, it gets color-corrected and graded, and then the sound and score are added.”
It took six years to make this movie.
It also has an incredible voice cast, including Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Jordan Peele and Christopher McDonald.
There hasn’t been a movie ever before that looks or feels like this.
For those that can get past just how strange it looks to have human-sized puppets in every role, this movie is pretty awesome. Reality pretty much falls apart as Les has to place poison gas in workplaces, watches assassination TV shows and even is forced to slice the head off a baby, one which soon sprouts tentacles. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Can we even be sure after the end?
If you want to see a movie that goes all the way and beyond, Abruptio is for you.
Abruptio was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Directed by Kwak Jeong-deok, Night of the Assassin is the story of a killing machine named Lee Nan (Shin Hyeon-jun), who discovers that he has a deadly, long-dormant health condition. As he goes into hiding to seek the magical herb that can heal him — mahwangcho — he learns that he can’t stay hidden for long, as the restaurant owner Seon-hong and her son Chil-bok who took him in are under threat.
Now that Lee Nan is sick, it’s easy for the women and her son to only see him as a beggar. But to the other killers, he’s now a target, as they may finally have an advantage against him. Well, his doctor said he can never fight again. Or be with a woman. He better find that healing herb soon, right?
Just a simple waiter at Seon-hong’s cafe, Lee Nan must eventually battle gang boss Ibang (Lee Moon-sik), who has the locals all hooked on opium and whose bandits are keeping him from seeking his cure. All the while, Lee Nan is going through a crisis of the soul, wondering if this is his punishment for a life spent killing others.
I really enjoy this movie. It feels kind of like a fairy tale and does a great job of presenting the emotional toll that being a bad ass action hero must put on your soul.
Night of the Assassin is available on DVD and blu-ray from Well Go USA. It’s also streaming on Hi-YAH!
The quantum suicide thought experiment is a lot like Schrödinger’s cat. In that, a cat, A cat, a Geiger counter, and a bit of radioactive poison are placed in a sealed box. Quantum mechanics believes that after some time, we can consider the cat to be both alive and dead. If you were to look into the box, you would find out the truth, but for now, you must assume that the cat is in both states.
A quantum suicide is an experiment where the box kills an occupant in a given time frame with a probability of one-half due to quantum uncertainty.
The difference?
The person inside the box is recording their observations of what is happening.
The significance?
This person is in a life and death situation and realizes it, unlike the cat.
There are also three rules, as written by Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe:
The random number generator must be quantum, not deterministic, so that the experimenter enters a state of superposition of being dead and alive.
The experimenter must be rendered dead (or at least unconscious) on a time scale shorter than that on which they can become aware of the outcome of the quantum measurement.
The experiment must be virtually certain to kill the experimenter, and not merely injure them.
Man, I hate math.
Directed and written by Gerrit Van Woudenberg, Quantum Suicide is about a physicist on a quest for the Grand Unifying Theory of Physics.
You know, the Theory of Everything.
He builds a particle accelerator in his garage and begins his research into the nature of reality. In the process of his experiments, he suffers radiation poisoning, loses his vision and causes his partner to leave him. Yet in his obsession, which has seemingly destroyed his life, he finds some level of understanding and clarity. Only one test remains to finish his work.
This isn’t the kind of movie filled with action. It requires plenty of thought and attention. I really liked the messages within it, but trust me, it’s not for everyone. But for viewers ready to experience this film, it has plenty to reward you with.
You can learn more about this movie on the official site.
Quantum Suicide is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
John (Chris Parnell, who should be in more movies) has lost everything. His wife (Tiffany Morgan; who before she dies reminds him that she would also like to be known as mother), his son Kyle (John Reynolds) and his beloved ’71 muscle car. Oh yeah — his newspaper is also bought out by Chaz AF (Julio Torrez) and turned into a website. John is immediately fired. And then he’s knocked off a bridge by influencer Jak-E Wak-E (Carmen Christopher) to what looks like his death.
But nope. He survives in the woods and becomes stronger, remembering who did this to him. Now, he’s going to become the Millenial Killer.
If you liked the Tubi original Pastacolypse, this shares much of the same creative team. It was directed by Jason Shwartz and written by Sam Taggart. It feels like they had several seasons of material and suddenly worked it all into this movie, including a team of millennial supervillains, a new romance for John with a former co-worker who is Generation X, John meeting a millennial he actually likes (but not for long) and tons of violence.
I laughed a few times during this and if you have an open mind, you probably will too.
There’s a Trim Season comic book that came out in 2022, which was based on an original concept from Megan Sutherland, Sean E DeMott and Cullen Poythress. They were inspired by the story of several women who went missing in Humboldt County, CA during a marijuana harvest. That turned into a screenplay, written by David Blair and Ariel Vida, and then the comic book by writer Jake Hearns, pencils and inks by Mara Mendez Garcia and colors by Lorenzo Palombo.
Directed by Ariel Vida, Trim Season is about Emma (Bethlehem Million) and Julia (Alex Essoe), who get recruited by James (Marc Senter) to head up into Northern California for trim season and make $5,000 cash. They’re joined by Harriet (Ally Ioannides), Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and Lex (Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy) and when they get there, things already seem odd. There are guns everywhere carried by masked men. None of those men join them, because the only trimmers are women.
Then they meet their boss, Mona (Jane Badler, still terrifying me ever since she ate a rat in V), who looks like the kind of female villain that would once have battled and bedded James Bond. And as they work 16 hours days, they start to learn that this isn’t the job they were promised, what with Mona having some kind of magical powers thanks to a strain that only he can inhale and survive.
Somehow folk horror meets Suspiria meets body horror, Trim Season exceeded any expectations I had for it. Balder owns every moment she has on screen and man, how many costume changes did she get? As many as she wanted, that’s how many.
Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Geoff and Rich Brewer (Graham Weldin and Andy Phinney) have always tried to outdo one another, but Geoff always finds himself in second place against his older brother. For example, Rich will always be the anchorman on camera and Geoff will always be the one holding the camera, never seen. Yet after Rich dies in a woodcutting accident, Geoff searches for help from his friend Colin (Cameron Perry) and a mysterious cult. Soon, not only will his life be changed, but so will the lives of everyone in the town of Eldritch.
That’s right. They have the Necronomicon and use it to bring back Rich, who instead of being the one who does everything right is now a flesh-eating zombie.
Also: This is a musical.
Thanks to music by the band Fox Royale, this has some catchy songs and tight directions — with near dayglo colors at times — from Ryan Smith (who also wrote the script) and Tyler Foreman. Geoff and Colin struggle to get Rich to remember human morality as his need to consume blood and brains begins to overwhelm him.
It’s a cute idea done well and also done on a small budget. There’s a ton of heart — and other organs — in this movie and I think it definitely has the potential to be loved on a big scale.
Eldritch USA was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Kait (Kaitlyn Boyé) is trying to self-rehabilitate from her drug habit with her sister Olivia (Laneikka Denne) filming the entire journey. Yet the house they have picked to undergo this process in keeps warping and changing, threatening to trap them forever.
Directed and written by Jack Dignan, this Australian found footage film places the sisters into constantly unfamiliar territory where a demon more powerful than addiction has been awakened and where every twist and turn traps them deeper in this never-ending nightmare world.
I’m not always the biggest fan of found footage, but this has an unsettling mood that holds up for most of the movie, as well as a bleak ending that really got to me. If it worked that well for me, lovers of this genre are going to absolutely love this.
Puzzle Box is playing at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Co-director/co-writer/actor Michael J. Ahern, co-director/co-writer/actor Brandon Perras-Sanchez and co-director/cinematographer/editor Ryan Miller also made Death Drop Gorgeous, a movie I loved, and they didn’t slow down here, opening the film with a man slicing open his own stomach and pulled out his intestines. You know, start strong.
Caleb (Perras-Sanchez) and Adrian (Ahern) are on holiday in Provincetown, Massachusetts — the setting for Tough Guys Don’t Dance — in the hopes of finding the magic that’s been lost in their love. The truth is that Caleb had a nightmare about his ex Isaac (Tradd Sanderson) and wants to find him in a town where everyone works hard to be a stranger. Well, except for Eric (Matthew Pidge), who ends up hooking up with both, causing a break-up. That’s when Caleb decides to find out the truth for himself. You know what I say: the truth is overrated.
Paced like a 70s slow burn horror film — and I’m not saying that like a cliche, this actually does it — this explores the kind of tourist town that you could never belong to as an outsider. And yet people want to be part of it, to be in a scene and being part of it costs them so much more than may be prepared to pay.
If you loved Death Drop Gorgeous, this is seriously a complete and total tonal shift, but the same crew and a lot of the cast shows up. What this also has going for it are some of the goriest practical effects I’ve seen in some time. They list their budget at just $20,000 on IMDB and — yes, I know, I know, never believe IMDB — but if so, wow.
I hereby nominate Provincetown, by virtue of this great film, as one of those coastal towns that are just a few miles from each other, even if this comes from another part of the country and decades removed from The Fog, Dead and Buried, Messiah of Eviland Night Tide.
Saint Drogo is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Blind Waters wastes no time, having two people swim off a yacht and get devoured by a shark with no explanation. Do I need one? After all, I’m watching a shark movie by The Asylum at one in the morning.
I guess this at least has some shark movie pedigree, as it was directed and written by Anthony C. Ferrante, the same guy who directed every Sharknado movie.
Valentina Armas (Meghan Carrasquillo) and Weston Dern (Noam Sigler) are on a beach vacation when her purse gets stolen while he’s ordering some bad tasting drinks. They kiss under the fireworks and all is forgiven as we wake up to drone footage of the surf at daybreak.
Meanwhile, Chris Burman (Chris Cleveland), his wife Larisa (Becki Hayes) and their daughter Eliza (Patty Cruz) are trying to get a boat for a fishing trip. They’re all warned that there’s a storm coming through. And as the Coast Guard leaves. Gabe (Francisco Angelini) — the guy they paid for the boat — hotwires it and cranks up some sub-Chili Peppers. Within moments, he throws a bloody knife in the water. That brings out a shark that kills Chris and Larisa before we even get to know them, other than that they bet over things. Well, they both lost.
Valentina and Weston get a boat — from the guy who Chris tried to pay double for the rental — and go out to go SCUBA diving. You know, alone. Because that’s totally safe.
Once the storm kicks up, one of the Coast Guard, Margo (Jhey Castles) decides to go on patrol.
And now, everyone is set up to fight the shark. The first time that Valentine and Weston see the shark, it seems like he’s running from it, leaving her alone. But in truth, he was setting up his proposal but never thought that a shark would ruin his big moment of getting down on one knee in his wetsuit. The shark then cock blocks Weston by repeatedly ramming the boat while he’s trying to propose.
Well, this shark is pretty ruthless. He knocks out Valentina and she goes blind, then it drags Weston under and takes a bite out of his leg while he unheroically screams. They barely escape, despite getting in touch with the Coast Guard, before getting stranded on an island with a strange man who claims that his family was destroyed by the shark. That man ends up being Gabe, who has the dead body of Charlie and wants to use it as bait to escape the devil fish.
But would you be shocked to know that Gabe stole Valentina’s purse? And that she finds the ring Weston wants to give her just as the shark makes a meal of the villain? And no spoilers, but not everyone is getting out of this shark movie alive.
This entire movie reminded me why I will never go on an island or beach vacation. Also: How does Ferrante go from the insane time travel of the last Sharknado to this, perhaps one of the most basic shark movies I’ve seen? Do the bills really need paid that much?
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