Tag Archives: 2024

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 30: Exhuma (2024)

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30. EXHUMATION POINT: Digging up the past one coffin at a tomb time.

Korean shaman Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her assistant Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) have been hired by a wealthy Korean American family to determine why their infant son is sick. It turns out to be something called the Grave’s Call, as an ancestor wants something from them. They take the family’s eldest member, Park Ji-Yong (Kim Jae-cheol) to the grave of his grandfather, along with a Feng Shui expert named Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin), a funeral home owner, to see what they can do to stop the curse.

Kim Sang-deok is wary and doesn’t trust the entitled family and their plans to excavate the grave without cremating what is left. Hwa-rim and Bong-gil perform their ritual and a human headed snake appears. As you can figure out, this is a bad omen. Then, a custodian opens the coffin, hoping to find treasure. This unleashes the angry spirit of the grandfather, who worked with the Japanese during War World II and was never given a proper burial. He kills Park Ji-Yong and several members of his family before Sang-deok cremates the grave and saves the child.

Months later, Yeong-geun and Sang-deok meet with the gravedigger who killed the snake, who has been upset since. The grandfather’s grave site was sold to him by a man named Gisune, who ends up being a Japanese shaman named Murayama Junji, who has been killing local priests and animals. Hwa-rim and Bong-gi are attacked by this samurai ghost, which becomes a ball of flame before possessing Bong-gil.

Then we learn the major plan of the Japanese, which was to leave iron spikes throughout Korean, enabling them to destroy the magic energy of the country and claim it. Gisune has been protecting his spike, which is a headless samurai, inside the grave of the grandfather. The four gather to remove this magic from their homeland and end the reign of the Japanese ghost.

Korean shamanism is something I haven’t seen much of in movies and director and writer Jang Jae-hyun has created something really wild here. It’s a bit long for those without much attention, but it’s also nearly two movies worth of story as you can consider the reveal of the Japanese magic to almost be a sequel.

The director may be a Christian deacon, but he had his actors study real rituals from shamans in order to accurately portray them. There was even a shaman on set.

Yet this is about more than magic. The four heroes are named for the martyrs of South Korea who fought against Japanese colonial rule. There are some big ideas in this and it’s worth taking the time to absorb it.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Surprise 3 (2024)

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In Surprise, David Gamble (Will Coleman) thought that his wife Jenna (Nunu Thurman) was having an affair with his business partner and best friend Greg (Lemastor Spratling), so he took things so far that he ended up paying for his best friend to be killed and then seemingly having a heart attack.

In Surprise 2, David woke up in the hospital, still alive, with Greg clinging to life as the killer that our protagonist hired is waiting to murder him. The killer went to jail and ended up being killed by his cell mate.

Surprise 3 starts with David digging a grave.

Directed by the same team of Rockey Black and Jhayla Mosley, Greg is finally clear to get out and back to his old ways, asking out the nurse taking care of him, Kelly (Marietta Elliott). David is losing his mind and Jeanna still has no clue what’s going on as she’s on vacation. David is still dealing with Lisa’s (Amerrah Garrison) murder as his wife asks him to watch her home.

Meanwhile, Detectives Rogers (Grover McCants) and Johnson (DeJuan Ford) are on their way to the hospital as they build their case just in time for Greg losing his phone and the evidence of what has happened to him. The cops want him to wear a wire while Jeanna comes home wondering where Lisa is. In fact, everyone wants to know where Lisa is.

By dealing with Lisa’s murder, I mean that David soon starts waking up to her angry ghost crying in his bedroom and telling him that he will pay. If it can get worse, it can, because the evidence disappeared thanks to the hitman hookup from the first movie, who is angry that the blood of one of his best men is in — not on — David’s hands. David threatens him, which is not a good idea.

David and Jeanna are staying at Lisa’s house when Greg visits. He gets there before David and tells his wife to not trust him. Just after, Jeanna is visited by Lisa’s mother, who wants to know where her daughter is. We get a flashback of Lisa telling her mother that she thinks that David is her boss but also someone she doesn’t trust.

Greg screws everything up by knocking out David, just in time for Lisa’s mother to go to the police and get a search warrant, sending them looking through the house. After a night at the bar, someone shoots at David and a mysterious envelope is left for him at his house that says “I know what you did.” David’s company is being audited and they find where Lisa’s body is buried. Things are not looking good for him, but I’ve been through two of these movies so far.

Spoilers below…

Except that this time, David doesn’t get out of things. He’s finally gets caught and goes to jail, sent there when the police find the dead body of Lisa. In prison, he gets killed by the same person who killed the other killer, under the employ of the man David hired, paid for by Greg, who is now making love to Jeanna.

Great ending, right? Well…

It was all a dream.

That’s right, three movies, all a dream.

There’s even a graphic that says: SURPRISE. IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

Readers were angry about the end of the last two movies. I can’t wait until I start getting letters and comments complaining about this one.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ Presents: The Downfall of Diddy The Indictment (2024)

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Just a few months after the TMZ special The Downfall of Diddy, there’s a follow-up that has the TMZ crew get into the indictment against the former Bad Boy.

Sean “Puffy” Combs has been with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. The charges claim that he abused, threatened and coerced women and others, and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

These are not small crimes.

According to the legal records, his “sexual abuse of women included causing them to engage in frequent, days-long sexual activity with male commercial sex workers, some of whom were transported over state lines.  These events, which Combs referred to as “Freak Offs,” were elaborate sex performances that Combs arranged, directed and often electronically recorded. To ensure participation in Freak Offs, Combs used violence and intimidation, and leveraged his power over victims — power he obtained through obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, exploiting his financial support to them and threatening to cut off the same and controlling their careers. Combs also threatened his victims, including by threatening to expose the embarrassing and sensitive recordings he made of Freak Offs if the women did not comply with his demands.”

According to Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, he is representing more than 120 men and women whose allegations against Combs include violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings and sexual abuse of minors. There are nearly more cases by the day.

Just this past week, Combs’ lawyers have asked for a gag order on all New York media, as they claim that the government has an illicit partnership with the press that will ruin Combs’ ability to get a fair trial. This is in regards to the video of him abusing partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura that he claims was leaked to CNN.

This doc even has an interview with Combs’ legal team, claiming that this is all about an attack on a successful black man. I’ve never felt right about Combs since the early incident where he oversold a concert leading to deaths, but I must remember that you are innocent until proven guilty. I wonder if Combs will ever get to trial.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I HOPE YOU SUFFER OCTOBER FILM CHALLENGE: Amityville Backpack (2024)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

Luther Boots (Mike Hartsfield) goes to a yard sale, finds a backpack — that has killed a child with a stock video explosion and that means I had to send a message to Erica from Unsung Horrors and pass the curse of this on to her — and it starts to kill everyone that is close to him.

Evan Jacobs also made Amityville Death Toilet, so I guess I have to watch this.

Every SRS-released Amityville movie has characters that just talk about everything. They narrate every moment of their lives. No one I have ever met talks like this, but yet this happens in all of their movies. I realize that we need to explain what is happening, but when the talking takes up most of the movie and people are given to saying things like, “Backpack, I think you’re going to help me a lot.” I lose my mind by the time a film like this one is over.

What didn’t help is that I usually watch Amityville movies all alone, but for some reason my wife came in and started watching this one and realized that she had made a mistake marrying me. She had so many questions about why I would spend so much time watching this and I was afraid to show her my Letterboxd list because I’m too old to start over again.

Anyways, what it does have going for it is shots inside the backpack, as well as the fact that the backpack looks just like the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. It also has the threat of a cat death — spoiler warning, it survives — and a lot of people killed by, yes, a backpack. Who knew that my old JanSport could have been so evil?

There were moments of this that were so uncolor balanced and the sun was bleeding into the image that I was shocked that it wasn’t filmed by someone who had never seen a camera or a movie before. Then there would be a great shot or a cool slow motion push in to someone. I wonder, can you tell when one of these movies is a parody any more?

Now, to the tune of Stroke 9’s “Little Black Backpack:”

Don’t want to watch this,

You say why not?

Don’t want to think about

Movies about this haunted town

There’s totally no good reason

For my wife to care about

This little Amityville Backpack

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Ronin Flix.

SCREAMFEST 2024: The Witch. Revenge (2024)

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An ancient witch named Olena (Tetiana Malkova) from the Ukrainian town of Konotop has given up her powers to fall in love with a mortal man, Andriy (Taras Tsymbaliuk). However, as we all know, Russia invader the Ukraine, which also happens in this film. As they’re pulled over by a group of soldiers, her lover reacts strongly to them touching her — by the way, when they ask her what the name of her dog is and she replies, “Ozzie, like the band,” and they say, “What about Pantera?” I guess it’s become international shorthand for racist baddies to be Cowboys from Hell — he’s killed and she barely makes it to the home of her Aunt Evdokiya (Olena Khokhlatkina). She decides that it’s time to get her power back and along the way, kill every single soldier that sets foot in the Ukrane.

As the Russians literally rape and murder their way through what they see as enemy territory, Olena gives in to her ancient ways and starts to kill them off, one by one. Some see visions of her and drive tanks over the bodies of their fellow soldiers. Others are overcome by fear and kill themselves. And still others have centipedes crawl out of their dickholes, which is something that I have never seen before. You can still be surprised and you know, that’s nice.

It feels a little exploitative but isn’t that every movie I watch? How often will you get to see a tree covered with the skin and blood of several horrible soldiers that have dared to hurt women? The effects are pretty good, the gore is non-stop and it moves quickly enough. I laughed several times at just how far it goes and if you’re wondering, the dog survives to remind our heroine that she can be good. So many people in this can be killed and scarred for life but if that little pup got the slightest injury, I would have been so upset.

SCREAMFEST 2024: Ba (2024)

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Daniel (Lawrence Kao) wants to remain with his young daughter Collette (Kai Cech) and the only way that he can make enough cash to do that is to become the Grim Reaper. When he needs to, his face becomes a skull and all he has to do is touch someone to kill them and he must never tell his child. I mean, how would you?

Director and writer Benjamin Wong has created a movie that isn’t about the herky jerky possession jump scares of modern horror, but instead about a relationship between a father and his daughter, as well as the love they have for each other. This also reminds me of the massive debt that so many of us have to take on, not just emotionally but monetarily, as a strange man keeps coming for tokens from each kill, reminding Daniel that he owes eleven times what he has borrowed.

By the end, Daniel must remain hidden so no one can see his face and he watches as a social worker by the name of Macey (Shelli Boone) takes Collette away to a foster family who can give her the life she truly deserves. What an intriguing concept and one well made, too.

SCREAMFEST 2024: Witte Wieven (2024)

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Witte wieven are the “white women” or “wise women” of Dutch Low Saxon origins. They were female herbalists healers who also could see the future.

In this film by director Didier Konings and writer Marc S. Nollkaemper, Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) is judged when she is unable to produce a child with her husband Hikko (Len Leo Vincent). Despite being a devout woman, when she emerges from a night of horror in the forest when Gelo (Leon van Waas) assaults a young girl named Sasha and almost takes her as well, everyone claims that she has become a witch.

The society that she lives in is one where she’s not even allowed to lead a prayer and where her husband can’t been infertile. Instead, she is the problem and even her self-flagellation isn’t good enough as he stops her and whips her the right way.

After visions of the white women, Frieda brings the forest to life, impaling Gelo multiple times and finding so many trees that have done the same to horrible men for centuries. Who blames her for running to those trees forever, leaving behind the patriarchy that has never seen her as anything other than property?

SCREAMFEST 2024: Antropophagus Legacy (2024)

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Dario Germani made Anthropophagus II two years ago, a sort-of sequel to the Joe D’Amato-directed and George Eastman-starring baby munching epic. This starts almost like a giallo, as Hanna (Valentina Corti) wakes up to her husband dead. As she’s in the hospital, she learns that she’s a suspect and that she’s also pregnant.

She runs to Budapest, where she meets her cousin Hugo (Salvatore Li Causi), who lets her in on the history of their family tree, one littered with forced cannibalism. At least there’s a flashback to Anthropophagus and we get to see the familiar and beloved face of George Eastman in a boat freaking out over how he’s killed his wife and child before, you know, eating them.

Maybe I romanticize the 1980s Filmirage era, but I’ve watched so many of those movies so many times. Yet there was a time when The Grim Reaper played U.S. theaters and drive-ins and I can’t even imagine how people felt when being confronted by it. This feels like a cannibal movie that has grafted itself onto D’Amato’s film and you know, I can’t be mad. If he was alive today, he’d probably be doing the same thing and would love that digital video would allow him to shoot so quickly.

There is one pretty great scene where Hugo picks up a couple and they go to a park for a a tre vie. As he approaches the guy, he goes for what his victim thinks is a kiss and then tears out his throat. Then, nude, he chases the naked female victim as well.

That said, the original presented Eastman as a terrifying monster — as does Absurd, its spiritual sequel — with frenzied eyes. It’s an image that has stuck in my head for decades and I fear that I’ve forgotten a lot of this film already, which is astounding when its one that has infants being consumed.

BEYOND FEST 2024: The Blue Diamond (2024)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

For a fun bit of science fiction horror with a 1980s aesthetic and an offbeat humorous vibe, you need look no further than director Sam Fox’s short-film blast of oddness The Blue Diamond (U.S., 2024). You know you’re in for a good time when Barbara Crampton is part of the cast, and that’s just for starters.

Crampton portrays Jacqueline, the recently deceased leader of a self-help cult based around, of all things, skiing. Her adult daughter Alison (Desiree Staples) travels to the group’s ski lodge for her mother’s funeral, and is understandably uneasy around the cheerful cult members, who behave in, shall we say, unusual manners and who dress in colorful 1980s ski outfits. The mother and daughter had a contentious relationship, and the more Alison learns the secrets behind Jacqueline’s freaky following, the worse things get for her.

Fox invests her unique short with interesting family drama, an engaging air of mystery, and plenty of highly entertaining bizarreness — wait until you get a load of the dance number. Crampton and Staples play off of each other marvelously. The short’s color palette and music scream “Soooo eighties!” and Fox directs with panache. 

The Blue Diamond is currently on the film festival circuit and screened as part of Beyond Fest, which ran September 25–October 9, 2024 in Los Angeles. For more information, visit https://beyondfest.com/

I HOPE YOU SUFFER OCTOBER FILM CHALLENGE: Once Upon a Time In Amityville (2024)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

Look, you had me at directed and written by Mark Polonia, never mind the fact that this is a Western set in Amityville when it was still being settled. This gets the first part of the Amityville equation right: It has a great title. It’s missing the second, which is having a tagline that gets you to watch it. “For God’s sake, get out! from the first movie?” Perfect. The third one has “Inside these walls, nothing is impossible … except survival.” And what does this give us? Nada.

That said, if all it had was the ending, where a puppet bat hovers in front of an explosion, as well as a scene where a severed head speaks with the voice of a demon and the time that a giant pentagram appears, it would automatically be better than 100% of the other Amityville movies I watch. The town looks like it belongs in the West, the costumes are good and the demonic noises sound like Sammi Curr being played backward.

The idea that this gets to Amityville before the house was even built is a decent one as well. Sure, there are too many scenes of people just talking, but at no point did I hate myself for watching this, which is so much more than I can say for most movies that start with Amityville and to me, that’s a win.