How low was the budget for this movie? Well, director, writer, cinematographer, grip, editor and executive producer Janon Lockridge could only afford to hire a makeup artist and a producer. And that producer, Taylor Gilliland, had to act in the film due to an actress being a no-show during production. To top that, there was so little money that Lockridge was only allowed to visit locations an hour before call time, which meant that he had to block the scenes and change them with little to no time for error.
Joseph (Kenon Walker) and Jessica (Jessica Jai Johnson) thought they had their dream home until someone outbids them. When they get back to their not such a dream home, it’s when some burglars are in the middle of a home invasion and Joseph gets killed. But by the time the cops catch the suspects, they’re already dead.
After a visit to Sheba (Tarsha Gibson), a voodoo priestess, Joseph is no longer the man that Jessica once loved. Now, he’s the Reaper Man. Obviously, many will compare this to Candyman, but for the budget, this works really well and Lockridge shows his skills in the face of hardship, including the death of his father while he was in production.
The Reaper Man is available on digital and on demand from Gravitas Ventures.
Ethan Carter (Joel Smith, who in addition to acting has directed and wrote several of his own movies) is trying to get over his ex-wife (Shelby Leigh) of six years who cheated on him. He’s put in the work of therapy — even if his friend and business partner Matt (Robert Q. Jackson) says that black men don’t do therapy and that all he needs is drink therapy and sex therapy — and feels ready to connect with someone in a meaningful relationship. That’s when he meets Arianna (Ebony Tates) at a Hibachi Go (2185 8 Mile Rd, Warren, MI 48091) as her card gets declined. So he pays it forward and gets her food for her. That’s their meet cute, but seeing as how she claims that mean is her middle name — and his mom’s is messed up — things already seem off before they even get to their first date.
Ethan is one of those nice guys that gives everything to their girl, including her own hairstylist business, a new car, a rental property, you name it. I don’t really get that she gives to him. She’s frequently late for dates, yells at him at every opportunity and used to date Kaos (King Wesley) who once nearly got her killed in a drive-by shooting. Or maybe his name is Chaos, because Ari can’t spell either. And she tends to quote Chris Brown in casual conversation.
He thinks she’s fascinating. She thinks he’s a square. Here’s what’s up: her danger is straight-up boner fuel for this sensitive man — Ari refers to him as a soft ass brother (well, she doesn’t use that word) — who sends flowers after the first date, the second date, every date. He’s the kind of guy that says, “My lower back is killing me,” to quote LL Cool J. He even takes her out on a boat, while she visits his office and gets naked on his desk.
So yeah, it’s working out.
There are red flags all over though. He keeps bringing up her thug dating past while pulling incel moves like giving her big gifts and making her feel guilty. I’ll confess to making this same mistake, as I’ve bought king size beds for at least three women in my life that I never slept in. So when I’m yelling at the screen and calling Ethan all kinds of derogatory names for his perceived weakness as a man, I’m yelling at myself. That said, I never proposed on a boat on the way to Belle Isle.
So we have a man who wants a woman who can be his everything but she’s unsure that she’s even in love with him. That means that when Chaos or Kaos gets out of his stint in jail, he goes right back inside Ari, despite Ethan being a safe guy. She should listen to her friend Mimi (Mica Bivings) who tells her that women bounce back from heartbreak while when you break a man’s heart, you take your life into your own — foreshadowing — hands.
I was pretty shocked that Chaos has no issues just raw dogging his old girl in public, despite the fact that he’s engaged to a new woman (Choo Scott) and has a kid (Italy Monclaire). But you know, when your man is whining about everything and constantly by worried about keeping you happy — yes, again, I am throwing stuff at the screen and remembering every relationship in my 20s, 30s, 40s — maybe you’d rather have your rough ex on top of and behind you. Or as Ari says, “That thug passion hit different. Ethan f*** me like a good guy. But K, he f*** me like a gangster.” She also refers to Ethan’s sex style as “sexually boring ass” and tells Mimi that “I forgot how big he was, girl. I’m sore,” and gets the advice to go soak her thing in the tub and hope that Ethan doesn’t want any for a few days.
Ethan is already feeling like he’s being cheated on and even his friends say he should go back to therapy. But maybe if he tries harder — again, literally screaming at the Tubi — she’ll stop and stay with him. At the same time, Chaos or Kaos or Kevin ends up working for him, renovating the property that he’s buying for Ari and even hiring him as a returning citizen. He looks at Ethan’s desk and sees a picture of his old girl and says, “It’s funny how life works out.”
After another fight — and a heart to heart between Ari and her mother — they decide to take some time off while Ethan goes on a business trip. If you think he’s coming back early and ending up catching his woman getting raw dogged, correct. But man, Ethan has had it and goes full Saw and the movie has twenty minutes left, so it definitely gets wild.
This is director Joe Smith’s first movie, although he wrote 2022’s Diamond Girls, which is also on Tubi. This movie has it all and by all, I mean a played and cucked man having sad sex with his cheating girlfriend, who already has a brutalized beaver, while both cry, him from sheer love and her from being torn up from the floor up. Movie magic is back.
Brian Nelson (Houston) was once on the fast track to being a high-powered attorney. Then his life fell to pieces when Oscar, one of his clients, took a hostage and started calling for him. The police allowed him to visit Oscar during his standoff, which ends with the man killing the girlfriend who slept around on him and then killing himself.
In the two years in between, Brian hasn’t been doing so well. Lynette (Lyrica Anderson), the wife that so obviously loved him has left him — she’s making out with a guy, asking for a foot rub and promising a meal of lobster and mashed potatoes when Brian rolls by and knocks that dude out — and he barely sees his daughter Karla (Victoria Nuckles).
Oscar’s brother, a drug dealer from his old neighborhood named Anthony Santiago (Beau Casper Smart), is about to go on trial for a double murder of his wife Carmen and her lover, Vincent Capprilla. Brian is forced into taking the case, with his estranged family being threatened if he doesn’t defend a man who seems guilty.
And yet things aren’t always how they appear.
This case even brings our protagonist into the orbit of the Luciano family, with Victor (Al Sapienza, Mikey Palmice from The Sopranos) explaining to him just how important it is that he gets Anthony out of his legal predicament. That may be near impossible, as Anthony refuses to even come up with an alibi, even when others try to give him one, and still insists that somehow Brian save him from death row.
Anthony and Brian share something of a friendship, even if he’s ruined his already ruined life, and in flashbacks, you can see how there was something of a level of trust between them. And it’s intriguing that Anthony feels badly for how Brian’s life has turned out and claims that he never intended to threaten his family. But that guy with a gun to his head named Zulu (Six Reasons) may say differently.
By the end of the film, Brian’s dodging attackers in the court room, his family is being held by criminals and he’s still having to pledge this case against Melissa (Judi Johnson), the talented attorney for the people. But even if he does pull it off, Anthony doesn’t like loose ends. What he doesn’t count on is that Brian came from the same place he did and knows how to play rough too.
No Way Out is a pretty fun thriller with a hero who keeps seeing the best in people no matter how horribly they treat him. Here’s to more films with Stokes and Houston together, as they really know how to entertain and Smart makes for a wonderfully nuanced villain.
Vincent (Kristos Andrews) has been caught by the police thanks to undercover cop Chavez (Noel Gugliemi). He kills the turncoat and ends up in a maximum security prison, where his former special ops father Alex (Louis Mandylor) comes to speak with him. Meanwhile, a former cop turned criminal mastermind named Chandler (Brian Krause) is set to break out and add to his followers by bringing in fellow prisoners. He already has one dangerous henchman named Ruke (Howard McNair) and enough of his men on the inside to get away with almost anything.
He didn’t count on Alex being there.
As Chandler negotiates with Coleman (Tom Sizemore), Alex works on getting close all with the goal of saving his son, who at the same time is becoming part of the gang as the words he hears from Chandler mean more than his judgemental — and at times absent — dad.
Breakout isn’t going to be the most revolutionary action movie you see, but it’s just over 80 minutes, moves fast, has some great fights, one bad ass hero at its core and a bad guy who you want to see more of — and seeing as how this sets up a sequel, hopefully we get one — and that’s more than some big budget films deliver.
Brandon Slagle is a name to watch, as he knows how to build tension, deliver brutal brawls and make you want to see even more than he delivers. Well done. And the script he wrote with Robert Thompon (Crossbreed) and Devanny Pinn (who contributed stories to other Slagle movies like Area 51 Confidential and Vivid) may hit all the beats that you expect from a McClane clone, but somehow it’s way more gripping than ones that cost five times or more.
Marry F*** Kill is a game — I’ve always called it F*** Marry Kill — that was first discussed in the mid 2000s, but it presents a question of what person would you marry for life, who would you have sex with just once and who would you kill. It’s a silly game, but as this new movie tells us, it has its roots in an ancient Wiccan ritual known as Bed, Bind, Bury. The idea of this made me laugh so loud and heartily that it made this entire movie worth it. What a concept!
Five estranged college friends — Grant (Jedidiah Goodacre, Dorian Grey on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Paige (Maxine Denis), Simon (Robbie G.K.), Helen (Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks) and Vickie (Deanna Jarvis) — reunite for Beth’s (Devin Cecchetto) funeral after her suicide. Of course, before we get there, we watch Beth conduct a ritual praying to Asmodeus while we see her friends all having group sex. She’s staring at a photo of Grant while she extinguishing the candles, steps away from a pentagram and slices her throat.
In the Testament of Solomon, Asmodeus is said to have human mother and an angel father. In The Lower Key of Solomon, it’s said that he is is “strong, powerful and appears with three heads; the first is like a bull, the second like a man, and the third like a ram; the tail of a serpent, and from his mouth issue flames of fire.” In nearly all appearances of this demon, his is connected to the sin of lust.
The five all arrive in the town of Cedar Grove, the kind of small town where a cop warns them to leave and where the Gref House, Beth’s family mansion, is described as somewhere you don’t want to go to. That same officer also thinks he knows Grant, who thinks that he’s never been in this little hick town before.
They’re met by Stephanie Greffen (Tanya Clarke), Beth’s aunt, who takes them into Gref House and offers to allow them to stay there. The main reason they’re there — beyond claiming to want to attend her funeral — is because Beth’s lawyer told them that they would all be in her will. Then, Stephanie leaves them with some joints rolled with her personal crop, which lies at the intersection of two ley lines. Some believe that these lines were drawn between important structures as trade routes created by ancient British societies while others believe they mark magical powers and energies. Or, as Stephanie says, they’re “conduits of the supernatural and earthly energies.” Before she leaves, she tells the five that her special strain can do some weird things, so go easy when they smoke these sticks.
When they check out the house, they find Beth’s room, which is filled with photos of them in happier times. As we meet the characters, Helen seems like the freespirited one with purple hair, Paige the shy and quiet one, Simon and Vickie the superficial two of the circle and Grant the mysterious and haunted protagonist.
Grant sulks around the house and remembers better times with Beth, as they make out and she asks him to play marry f*** kill with him, leading to her saying that she wants to wait until marriage to make love. As he keeps thinking of the past, his finger is stabbed by the thorns of a dryed out flower.
You can imagine, of course, that everyone has darker memories of the past and how everyone pretty much slept with one another. And now when photos are taken within the house, strange ghost images start showing up. Well, show up, that is, when everyone isn’t doing the same thing they did in the past, with Vickie and Grant making love in Beth’s room. It seems from flashbacks that those two living up to the middle part of marry f*** kill is what doomed their friendships.
Then Grant calls Vickie Beth, and, well, you should never call a girl worried about another woman that woman’s name. If I ever give you any advice, take that piece.
Vickie heads off into the woods, gets followed by something growling and then blood sprays all over a tree. She never shows up for the funeral the next day, which is in a gigantic church that completely seems out of place in this small town.
At that funeral, Stephanie reveals to Grant that the Grefs are a powerful clan that have been dealing with tragedy for generations. She also claims that Grant has powers which allow him to see and feel things that others can’t; he’s susceptible to the dark arts just like Beth was and he needs to run away from this place and never look back.
That night, everyone decides to smoke those magical chronic and it’s so potent that Beth shows up, sitting next to Grant, and only he can see her. She takes him outside, they dance the forbidden polka and while she’s grinding on top, she yells, “Give it to me” so many times that her voice becomes demonic. He wakes up naked in the back yard; man, I need to get an eighth of this Satanic sticky icky.
Also: For those of you playing at home, this has more male nudity than female to the point that I was wondering of director Caroline Labrèche is really David DeCoteau.
The will gets read and Stephanie gets land from Beth while the rest of the group gets all of her money and the house, along with Beth’s wish that “May my house and the beds in it bind you together and bury the troubles that once tore us apart.” This upsets Beth’s aunt, who says that it can’t be right. She stands up and says that if they stay, Beth has doomed them all.
That night, the four remaining find a room with a leather bound book that claims that the Grefs were one of the original families descended from a necomonical sect of Asmodeus, founded in the Dark Tern of 1432. They were the foremost magicians of Soot, the long-lost art of demonic jurisdiction. One of Beth’s ancestors was named Abigail and it’s at this point — even before a photo of someone who looks like Grant is in the book — that I would get out of this house. Demonic books never works out. Take it from someone who has a bunch in his basement.
You’d do the same if you found an attic full of bones, right?
This is the kind of movie where people say things like, “The veil between life and death is diaphanous,” which is why I keep watching movies like this and the people stick around until they all start dying and pregnant ghosts with demon voices just roll by to bid you good evening.
Anyways, spoiler warning, but one of the five is Asmodeus and she had made some magic love spell to keep Beth and Grant together in the next life, but everyone ate it and had that wild orgy. Can two guys and two girls even be an orgy any longer and do the rules for group sex versus orgy follow the same need to have as many people as a mass shooting (four or more) and why is gun violence so omnipotent when we should just all be having sex? Anyways, I’m also for sure this has to be DeCoteau-influenced because more time is shown of Grant and Simon kissing than Paige and Helen. That’s what ruined everything for our friiends in this story, in case you were wondering.
So yeah. Beth Gref and Grant Faodhagain were always destined to be together and Beth called on Asmodeus to bring them together forever. Paige never existed because she’s always been a demon and wow, this movie got way deeper than I ever expected. And more occult, as there’s a ritual with dead bodies, knife to the throat sacrifices and more pentagrams than a Motley Crue bootleg t-shirt.
But that’s not the end. There’s still one more final turn that must happn.
Marry F*** Kill is way better than the title of the film would lead you to think. Labrèche has a good eye for putting a movie together and the script by Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter (the Slasher series, the two new Terror Train films) gets in so much of what works in low budget genre filmmaking and feels pretty unapologetic for it. It looks really well made, so maybe $3 million gets you so much more in Quebec.
A battle of wills, a cat-and-mouse game, a potentially dangerous deep dive into the inner workings of a revenge-minded miscreant — New Zealand journalist/filmmaker David Farrier’s latest documentary Mister Organ is all of this and much more.
Farrier catches wind of a highly suspicious parking boot operation at an antiques store, where the film’s titular centerpiece, Michael Organ, is demanding exorbitant amounts of cash for people to get their cars back. Matters escalate from there as Farrier initially exposes Organ’s racket and then makes the mistake many people — several of them interviewed for this film — have made: getting involved with Organ, who seemingly leaves a great deal of emotionally and psychologically damaged acquaintances in his wake. Former roommates, judges, and even his own family members want nothing to do with him, and Farrier learns why — the hard way.
Mister Organ is a fascinating look at a person who takes anyone who crosses him to task, be it in a courtroom, with veiled threats, and sometimes worse. Farrier has crafted a gripping cautionary piece about the perils of trying to play one upmanship with someone highly skilled at the activity.
Mister Organ screened as part of Boston Underground Film Festival, which took place from March 22–26, 2023.
A new version of The Most Dangerous Game, this finds Cassandra (Mena Suvari, a long way from American Pie) trying to find her lost girlfriend and daughter. It leads her to Carter (Casper Van Dien), who offers her $100,000 to be part of the hunt on his island.
I’m sure you can see where this is going. He wants her to be part of the hunter, along with other women like Tessa (Maya Stojan) and Lexi (Jessica Belkin) while he and his rich friends like Jackson (Will Peltz) and Virgil (Mickey Rourke) try to kill them.
But those rich guys have no idea just how dangerous women can be.
I have to tell you, this movie has one of the bloodier and most upsetting castrations I’ve seen in a movie and if that’s not a selling point, I don’t know what is.
Directed by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas (Unseen, Just Swipe) and written by David Lipper and John Saunders, Hunt Club might not break any new ground, but it moves quick, looks good and has plenty of star power for a streaming movie. I love that Van Dien has found a second life playing heavies in movies like this, because he’s really great in this film.
Hunt Club is available on digital, on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.
There’s a fine line between a dominant person and someone who takes advantage of their submissives. I mean, yes, there’s always the element of taking advantage of someone within BDSM, but the idea of consent remains paramount so that the headspace to roleplay can be successfully explored. But when someone takes advantage of that trust, they prove themselves to be the absolute worst in humanity.
Unfortunately, when Hollywood allows this hidden side of human sexuality into their films, it’s often for. the exploitation value and always leads toward antagonists who use their power in the worst of ways. For the unitiated, it seems that the world of domination and submission is a mind destroying world of sinister sneering men and meek brutalized women.
Safe Word would be another of those films, but at no point did I expect it to give me life lessons or properly translate the multiflavored world of kink for a mainstream audience. I just expected to be entertained.
Colette (Moriah Brown) has just met Ethan (Gavin Houston) and she’s already smitten. He’s good looking, seemingly successful and able to push her libido into forbidden places. For some reason, one of those forbidden places is to reenact the meet cute in Notting Hill, which doesn’t seem like something a young African American couple would get turned on by, but who am I to yuck anyone’s yum?
Within just a few weeks, Colette is neglecting her job — the tension between she and a co-worker feels like the kind of storyline that would last for weeks on a streaming show but here is over in minutes — as well as her friend Lainey (Kajuana S. Marie) and even her mother. Then, she and Ethan run off to elope and her dream relationship quickly grows brutal and dark, with arguments erupting over everything, including multiple arguments over the quality of pudding. Look, if you’ve been in a bad relationship, you get that fights can emerge over the smallest of things. I may have never fought over the quality of my homemade desserts, but I can see it happening.
Ethan also breaks down Colette’s sexual hangups and brings toys and restraints into their bedroom. She reminds him that she has some behavioral health issues that cause her to panic whenever she’s confined and he explains to her how a safe word works. Yet within days, he’s telling her things would be hotter without the safe word that stops him from going further. This should be her — and anyone’s — first clue that this guy is the wrong person to give power to, as the very idea of a safe word allows the play of saying no and stop while the dominant keeps going. The safe word keeps that illusion while also giving the submissive a level of security that yes, things can actually stop.
He also brings her to a sex club where she has her first threesome, an event she brags about to Lainey, who seems way interested in her friend’s romantic life, a fact that upsets Ethan and makes him consider ending their marriage. There’s also the matter of a woman that Colette meets, Stephanie (Shaquita Smith), an ex-lover of Ethan who seems deranged as a result of what he made her endure. Is she just a jealous woman from the past or is she justified in wanting revenge?
Spoiler: She’s totally right, as Ethan comes from an entire secret society of sexual beings who own the police, the courts and, well, pretty much everything. I kind of love that this weird side of the movie only comes out once or twice. And I adore that Stephanie is an absolute maniac when she attacks people, brutalizing them beyond the point of normalcy.
Directed by Sara Seligman and written by Dana Verde, Safe Word could be considered a Lifetime version of 50 Shades of Grey with a more evil edge. As most Tubi movies have been having sequels, I can definitely see how this can have another chapter and you know, I’d definitely watch this. Yes, I disagree with the way that it presents the world of kink, but you know, that’s a lost battle. It does achieve it’s main goal, which is being ridiculous fun.
David Gamble (Will Coleman) has it all. A gorgeous wife named Jenna (NuNu Thurman). A successful business with his college best friend Greg (Lemastor Spratling, who in addition to being a director, actor, model, producer writer, he’s also the CEO of Fair Game Credit Repair). It’d all be great if he didn’t wonder why his wife seems to be working late hours and Greg’s number keeps coming up on her phone. Then he hires a private detective to find out what’s going on. Here’s some advice: if you don’t want to know the answer to a question, don’t ask it.
Obviously, spoilers from here on out.
The funny thing is, you can see through what’s happening here as soon as the drama starts. It’s literally the kind of plot that happens on sitcoms. Except that, well, most sitcoms don’t have angry husbands meeting hitmen in parking lots — I love how the hitman says, “Meet me in the shopping center” as if there’s only one place in shop in the entire town where this takes place — and paying to have their best friend dealt with.
Even funnier is how David reacts to all of this, as Gamble portrays it like a mild inconvenience when he realizes he was wrong and doesn’t even really freak out all that much when calling Greg or trying to warn the guy who has been his friend forever that he’s about to die. Then his heart starts beating really hard and he passes out to end the movie. It doesn’t come off as dramatic. It comes off as absolutely hilarious.
That said, director and writer Janaya Black knows the kind of movie that she’s making. She keeps things moving and entertaining. Sure, it really does seem like Jenna is hiking the Appalachian trail with Greg but man, David should have listened to that detective — every white guy in this is either a seedy detective or a killer and all of them tell you that if you ever talk to them again, they’ll kill you — and had a conversation before he decided to make that big step.
Man, this movie made me nervous — not a bad review, mind you — and I can’t even imagine how a mother would be watching it. Adalynn (Sydney Carvill) is a new mom coming to terms with the pain of postpartum depression and maybe something more terrifying. Sure, she lives in the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood in the perfect town with the perfect husband Dr. Bill (Wade Baker) but certainly things have become quite imperfect.
Adalynn has just given birth to Elizabeth, but all she can think of is the child she lost before. She’s off her meds and all alone as her husband is gone for work for a whole week, with a child we never quite see and a mania that we quite plainly do.
Directed by Jacob Byrd and written by Jerrod D. Brito, this is a movie that’s disturbing for what we think may and could happen and that’s what good horror is all about. I don’t know if I could watch it again, as it’s upsetting to think of a child in this much danger from its own mother, yet I can’t help but call it out for being such a well-made film and Carvill handles herself quite well in a role that has to carry the entire load of the movie.
Adalynn is available on digital platforms and DVD from Summer Hill Films, LLC.
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