Alexis Walker (Linnea Swanson) lost her mother and brother to a home invasion that was led by Dante (Ken Brewer). At the same time that the South Bay Slasher (Lawrence Waller) is killing victims, she’s saved women on the streets by, well, shooting dudes a whole bunch of times. Now, detectives Shane Douglas (Doug Waugh) and Maddie Schoefield (Traci Burr) are on the case, as are O’Brien (Tom Grindle) and Ramirez (Al Zuniga) and so many people are going to die along the way.
Directed by Brewer, who co-wrote the script with Meri Gyetvay, this is the kind of movie that is packed with gunfire with CGI results and acting that is challenged at best. And then it surprises you, because Bridget “The Midget” Powers is a force of terrifying nature as she plays Stella, the small yet deadly member of the gang and really the greatest part of this movie. Swanson is also quite good as the title character, a woman who has given up on life and demands the deaths of everyone who ruined her existence.
That said, if you like microbudget movies, if you want to see 45 people die, if you want to hear the word fuck more times in five minutes than ten movies combined, well, this movie has the goods. Actually, I really enjoyed how its multiple plots converged, how it goes from slasher to revenge movie, and how it makes no excuses for the fact that it’s filled with horrible people being scumbags and paying the price at the end of a gun. Here’s hoping for Death Bitch 2 and even more punishment.
Christopher Lee was a hero to me as a child. If you’ve read about his life, as all horror fans have, you’ll known that he was a soldier, spy, Nazi hunter and so much more before becoming an actor. What you may not know is how hard it was to get started, as he was too tall for so many roles.
This film, directed and written by Jon Spira (Elstree 1976), combines archival footage, puppetry, animation and interviews with tons of people to get the full story of Lee.
With Peter Serafinowicz (the live action version of The Tick and Darth Maul’s voice) providing Lee’s voice, you’ll learn how the actor became a horror icon, even if he was often mistaken for his close friends Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, as he jokes in this. Actually, the moments where he talks about Cushing waiting decades to be with his dead wife and just playing with toy soldiers and passing time made me tear up.
Everyone from Joe Dante and John Landis to Peter Jackson and Caroline Munro has a story to tell. Some may not like the puppet version of Lee, but it worked by the end of the film. And there’s something to learn for even the biggest fan of Lee, like how Errol Flynn gave him a fencing injury to how he witnessed one of France’s last public executions. I also loved his pride in getting a stuntman belt buckle during the filming of Airport ’77!
With a career as big as Lee’s and one that lasted so long, there will be some things missed. However, this hits so much, from working with Jess Franco and Mario Bava to him suggesting Dennis Wheatley to Hammer and singing in The Return Of Captain Invincible.
It even shows him menacing Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye!
Nisha (Inaya Zarakhel) has come from Pakistan to the Netherlands to work as an exotic dancer. She’s close to gender-affirming surgery and everyone around her remains confused as to how they should react to her. She also has demonic visions and worries that by having this surgery that she will unleash something horrible on the world.
Some of the men that she meets treat her like a fetish. Others, at a party where she and Eva (Charlie Chan Dagelet) dress like police, are enraged that she has a penis still. She’s abused by them in a horrifying moment that unleashes the monster inside of her, an expected moment but still one that is well shot and intense.
Directed by David-Jan Bronsgeest and David Kleijwegt and written by Martin Koolhoven and Tim Koomen, this has incredible cinematography by Jeroen Kiers and a color palette that makes it look way more expensive than its budget. The ending is rushed and when you think too hard about the plot, things like the men’s party happening in what seems like a slaughterhouse feels weird, but. this is a first film for these creatives. Here’s hoping that the future is even better.
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?
Directed and written by Dean Puckett, The Severed Sun is based on his 2018 short The Sermon.
A pastor (Toby Stephens) rules his isolated village, but when his daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage, she doesn’t turn to God. Instead, she murders the man and brings a woodland beast to her village that starts to kill all of the horrible men of the village, causing her and her sons Sam (Zachary Tanner) and Daniel (Lewis Gribben) to be accused of witchcraft. One of the villagers, Andrea (Jodhi May), is even convinced that Magpie is having sex with this creature. When the entire world is against her, Magpie realizes that turning to the shadows may be the only way that she can survive. After all, her father allows her to be bound and the others to launch tomatoes at her. How long before he puts her to death as a witch?
I really loved how this film looks and can’t wait to see Puckett keep on making films. Here’s to bigger budgets without forgetting this movie’s big ideas.
Fumika (Akari Takaishi, Baby Assassins) is haunted by the ghost of killing machine Hideo (Masanori Mimoto), who wants her help in getting revenge on the people who killed him.
Simple concept, but incredible execution here.
It’s made by the Baby Assassins trilogy team of director Kensuke Sonomura and writer Yugo Sakamoto, working on a tight budget but delivering big action-packed martial arts and gunplay action.
When Fumika and Hideo join hands, he can take over her body, using her more frail form to do the murderous mayhem that he does so well. Kudo also learns from her that perhaps killing wasn’t all that life should have been about.
Sonomura has directed the action and created stunts for so many movies, like Bad City, the Resident Evil games, Deadball, Black Rat, The Machine Girland so many more.
If this was the 2000s, this movie would be bought by Miramax and remade with inferior action. Today, we’re lucky to get to see it almost in the same time period as its home audience.
In 1998, the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown was filmed in St. Helens, Oregon. Since then, it has seen 50,000 visitors every October, even 25 years later. Yet just like the town in the series of Disney films — Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge, Halloweentown Highand Return to Halloweentown — the locals believe that there are real hauntings. And beyond that, like any small town, there’s plenty of gossip to listen to.
Directed by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb, this is a film that feels like a real life Waiting for Guffman. There’s a zombie dance being choreographed by a girl who had to drop out of dance and who wants to reconnect with her father. A newcomer to the town has bought a favorite restaurant, the Klondike Tavern, and his social media mistake causes his entire staff to mutiny. A woman claims to the town council that she is being attacked in her dreams and that the town is becoming possessed by demons. And there’s also a team of paranormal investigators investigating the hauntings that they claim are real.
This film never makes fun of its subjects, instead allowing them to tell their stories. I absolutely loved this and have been raving about it to everyone I can, as it’s a perfect non-spooky way to get yourself ready for the Halloween season. Here’s hoping it finds a streaming home soon so more people can enjoy this fun hangout in a town that has embraced its history as a spooky location.
Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows) has been investigating her mental health and the reasons why when she remembers that her grandmother attacked her when she was just a child. This is all told in a found footage style that brings together video diaries, security camera footage, home movies, video chats with a therapist and more.
Dorothy Bell (Arlene Arnone Bibbs) is long missing, but the damage she did lives on and so does the urban legend that she haunts the library where she once worked. Ozzie tries to work out the past with her therapist Dr. Robin Connelly (Lisa Wilcox, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) and her father Darren (Michael Hargrove, Candyman).
Director and writer Danny Villaneuva Jr. has put together quite the puzzle here, even if this feels like a short that could have been kept a short. I really liked his movie I Dream of Psychopomp and this is an interesting watch that does more to prove his talent and make me hope for something even better next time.
Some advice for you. If you grandmother ever tried to stab you as a child and is now a ghost in a library, don’t buy her old house, no matter how cheap it is in today’s housing market.
Here are the short films that I watched at this year’s Fantastic Fest.
A Fermenting Woman (2024): Visionary chef and master fermenter Marielle Lau (Sook-Yin Lee) is about to be let go from the restaurant that she has given her life to. However, she has an idea to save things, as she begins to ferment a new dish that has an ingredient that truly feels like part of her. Directed by Priscilla Galvez and written by Maisie Jacobson, this puts you directly into the kitchen and all the time and energy that this dish takes. And perhaps it’s a pun to say that it has her blood and sweat in it, because Marielle uses her menstrual blood in her garden, so she decides that it should be the main ingredient in this fermented food. Marielle has taken a piece of her, perhaps the egg that she will never get to fertilize, and gives it to people who don’t pay attention to a bite of their meal, instead ignoring it as simple sustenance when she has given everything to make it into their mouths. The truest horror is that we create — whether its foods or the words you’re reading now — just so that they can be consumed and forgotten.
ATOM & VOID (2024): Gonçalo Almeida has magic here, a mixture of effects and real spider, as it watches the end of all things and perhaps the birth of a new adventure. The score, sound design and look of this film all work together to create perfection, just a true joy of watching and listening. In fact, I went back several times and saw it again, one of the few advantages of seeing this online and not in a theater. If you get the opportunity to watch it, take it. This is a short that I will think of far beyond most full length movies I see this year.
Be Right Back (2023): Ah, the worst words to say in a horror movie. In this short, Maria is left home alone while her mother goes to buy dinner. However, her mother takes way longer than she should and as the night grows dark, Maria is startled when she hears a knock on the door. Is it her mother? Or is it something else? Have you ever gone shopping when you were young and gotten lost, then looked for your parents only to find someone who you thought were them and were instead strangers? That’s the feeling that this creates and it is not one I ever thought that I would live through ever again.
A Brighter Summer Day for the Lady Avengers (2024): As if I couldn’t love this short enough, just check out this paragraph from its creator, Birdy Wei-Ting Hung: “My first encounter with Yang Chia-Yun’s Fēng Kuáng Nǚ Shā Xīng / The Lady Avenger (1982) was an uncanny experience. I was researching Italian giallo film when a vintage newspaper movie poster grabbed my attention. The advert depicted a sensational female vigilante that visually recalled Edwige Fenech in Tutti i colori del buio / All the Colors of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972), only this time it was an Asian woman’s face. Her alluring body was barely covered by a white sheet, and her lustrous black hair rested on her collarbones. Standing in a martial art squat stance, the way she holds a katana (Japanese sword) is reminiscent of Meiko Kaji in Shurayuki-hime / Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973) and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill(Quentin Tarantino, 2003). I had found our lady avenger Wan-Ching, who was played by Hsiao-Feng Lu—the Taiwanese “sexy goddess” of the 1980s, and Taiwanese pulp films.”
This short is a video essay that mixes “two specific female characters in Taiwan Pulp films and Taiwanese New Wave…the female protagonists in Yang’s The Lady Avenger, and in Edward Yang’s Gǔ Lǐng Jiē Shǎo Nián Shā Rén Shì Jiàn / A Brighter Summer Day.”
I love that this film puts these movies against one another, just as a young woman spends a day in the theater savoring a watermelon drink while watching several films beyond the two mentioned, as Deep Red is one of them. A sexual awakening as well as an exploration of what film tells its viewers about the path that being a woman can take, this is one of the most gorgeous shorts I’ve seen in years. I want people to just give Birdy Wei-Ting Hung as much money as she needs to create movies that will inspire us in the same way that films have motivated her.
Bunnyhood (2024): “Mum would never lie to me, would she?” In this short by director Mansi Maheshwari, writers James Davis and Anna Moore, as well as several talented animators, Bobby (Maheshwari) learns the answer as he is rushed to the hospital. The frenetic style of the animation creates the worries of childhood, replicating the fears that aren’t always rooted in the rational or the real. The hospital and surgery come across as horrific places where nothing good can happen and at times, our parents will lie to us to keep us from worrying about the truth. Is that the right way to be a parent? Who can say!
CHECK PLEASE (2024): I am a veteran of the wars of fighting for the check. The director, Shane Chung, is too. He said, “As a kid, I witnessed firsthand the quickness with which friends can turn on each other whenever my parents took me to dinner with their pals. It was all smiles until it came time to pay for the bill – then the fangs came out. “I got it!” “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s my treat!” “You can get me next time!” It got so serious for no reason. Arguing, subterfuge… it was killing with kindness taken to another level. I wondered how far someone could take fighting to pay for the bill. Inspired by my love of goofy slapstick action comedies like Drunken Master and Everything Everywhere All At Once, I thought: what if they literally fought each other? I challenged myself to write a ten-minute long action scene where two Korean-Americans fought each other with chopsticks, grill coverings, and credit cards… and CHECK PLEASE was born.”
Starring Richard Yan and Sukwon Jeong, this is a simple story but is so perfect. It gets across what it means to be a man — paying the bill — as well as the director’s attempts at getting across the feeling of assimilating to a new culture. It’s also filled with great action. I laughed really hard throughout and found joy here.
Compost (2024): Directed by Augusto and Matías Sinay, this film presents an intriguing way at looking at grief. Anastasia (Natalia di Cienzo) has just lost the love of her life, Lisandro (Maximiliano Gallo), after an accident as he builds the greenhouse where she plans on spending most of her time. How can a dream place be as such when it is filled with so much pain? And can she carry through with his last wish, which is to become compost for their plants? Can we become part of the cycle of death and rebirth when emotions are part of our equation, unlike the plants that we help bring to birth each year, only to have to watch them die in the fall?
Considering Cats (2024): A short experimental documentary shot at the Long Island Pet Expo in 2023 by director Matt Newby, this short asks us to “Take a moment to consider the cat.” Seeing as how I live with two, I do this every day. This does a good job of showing the joy that people find in the small creatures that become part of our lives, if only for a short time, in an interesting lo-fi style.
Do Bangladroids Dream of Electric Tagore? (2024): Allem Hossain’s short is described as “desi-futuristic sci-fi.” Interesting. The director says that this genre is “a body of sci-fi work that dares to imagine speculative futures through a South Asian lens.”
In this, a documentarian goes into the New Jersey Exclusion Zone to meet the droids that live there and learn why they are obsessed with a subversive Bengali Renaissance poet. Featuring the poem “Freedom” by Rabindranath Tagore, which is read by Bernard White, this is AI generated but its director asks us to think of “how AI and other technology will impact us but I think we should also be thinking about our moral and ethical responsibilities towards what we create.”
Don’t Talk to Strangers (2023): Imanol Ortiz López has created a short that looks like vintage Kodachrome and is set within a toy store that only looks bright and friendly. Even the IMDB description of this movie is somewhat scary: “Mom always told me not to talk to strangers, but Agustín is not a stranger, because whenever we go to his store he offers me treats.” A young girl is saying that and in this, she’s played by Inés Fernández, who explains how she was abducted by Agustín (Julio Hidalgo). It sounds simple and expected, but in no way does what is revealed end up that way. A really interesting short.
Down Is the New Up (2018): Directed and written by Camille Cabbabe, this is the story of how an ambitious filmmaker and his crew attempt to tell the story of the last hours of a man who plans on killing himself at dawn. To be honest, I found it kind of indulgent and wish that I had spent a bit more time watching it. Maybe it was the language barrier or honestly how many shorts I watched in a few days, but there wasn’t anything here that jumped and grabbed me. I feel I owe the filmmaker an apology and am certainly willing to try and see what was here one more time.
DUCK (2024): The sell copy for this promises that this is “a classic spy thriller turned on its head.” What it is is a deep fake generated film starring almost every actor to blame James Bond and Marilyn Monroe, all voiced by director and writer Rachel Maclean.
As someone who uses AI for my real job and to create music, I have no hate for it. I do, however, dislike this movie. It should be something I love, one that gets into aliens and conspiracies while using pop culture characters. Instead, it feels like robbing the graves of the cemetery at the lowest part of Uncanny Valley. It goes on and on, reminding you of the much better work of the actors who it is raising from the dead to serve as stiff actors for a plot that can be worked out in seconds. I believe AI and deep fake can create the kind of cinema that we want to see, movies that create joy. This just engendered ennui.
Empty Jars (2024): After the last two shorts I watched, this brought back the love I have for film. Director Guillermo Ribbeck Sepúlveda has crafted a fantasy world where a woman (Ana Burgos) deals with the loud guests at her hostel by freeing a ghost from a jar, a spirit that, well, fills her with something else, giving her an experience that she hopes to replicate again and again. Yet, as this movie shares with us, the dead are even less trustworthy than the living. What a gorgeous looking and feeling short. I can’t wait to see what else Sepúlveda can do!
Faces (2024): Look out for Blake Simon. In this film by the director and writer, he starts with Judy (Cailyn Rice) being invited to a fraternity party by Brad (Ethan Daniel Corbett). However, in the ether all around this is a character called The Entity, a creature that has been abducting women the same age as our heroine, such as Bridget Henson. Now, as the frat party hits its height, the struggle for identity and who or what people are plays out. Faces feels like an entire film in its short running time and could easily become a full length feature. Whatever The Entity is, whatever it is looking for and why it does what it does are all unimportant. What is is that Simon seems ready to become a valued new talent in horror and this announces him so well.
Godfart (2023): Directed and written by Michael Langan, this is “The very true story of how the universe was created.” God (Russell Hodgkinson) is looking for breakfast. This short explains it all. This is part of something called the Doxology Universe. As someone who loves breakfast, I want to know more.
How My Grandmother Became A Chair (2020): Director and writer Nicolas Fattouh has created the perfect way of showing what it’s like to slowly lose an aging family member, something that I have gone through several times of the past years. His grandmother is losing her senses, one by one, until she — as the title lets you know early — becomes immobile furniture. There are times when it takes animation and the surreal to make life — which never makes all that much sense — something more easily explainable. This looks so wonderful and moves so perfectly that even though I knew where it was going, it still ended up as an emotional experience.
Huntsville, July 1981 (2024): In Sol Friedman’s short, four characters must deal with the ferocious attacks of a creature that is hiding in the woods. I loved the look of this, which seems like the wildest sketches the weirdest kid in school made and here they are, coming to life.
J’ai le Cafard (Bint Werdan) (2020): “J’ai le cafard” means “I have the cockroach,” yet it also means “I am depressed.” Director and writer Maysaa Almumin is followed everywhere by a dying large cockroach, which is her mental anguish. She connects more with this gigantic roach than anyone else around her until she realizes the impact that it is having on her life. I loved the puppet work and enjoyed seeing how this idea came to life. Can you be friends with an insect? This movie asks that question and I think the answer is yes, but roaches can be just as infuriating as people.
Manivelle: The Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow (2017): Directed by Fadi Baki Fdz, who wrote this with Omar Khouri and Lina Mounzer, this takes a realistic look at an unrealistic story, exploring the life of Manivelle, an automaton from Lebanon whose life seems to mirror the history of the country. His glory years were in the past, when life felt free, and today he is falling to pieces, his body failing him, reaching out in vain to people whose lives he ruined. Manivelle has been an actor, a soldier and now, he’s just a lost robot that claims to run a museum and read books, but he fails at all of that. I absolutely loved how this was shot. It’s perfect.
Yummo Spot (2024): Directed and written by Ashley Brandon, this is about a couple who moves to the woods and tries to start a family. Soon they learn that the Live, Laugh, Love lifestyle may be more difficult than they thought. This had a strange vibe but you may enjoy it more than me.
Two of Hearts (2024):Director and writer Mashie Alam places a boy (Anaiah Lebreton) and a girl (Basia Wyszynski) in a battle over some decisions, like eating a piece of pizza. Are they brother and sister? Are they a couple? Where did they get all of those great clothes? What’s happening? This is one of those times when the way something is filmed outdoes the basics of the script. Does the title refer to a Stacey Q song? Where is this house where they live? Can I visit? This movie has an amazing look and I want all of the answers to these questions and so many more. It’s good to have questions. It’s good to want to know more.
Skeeter (2024): Chris McInroy gets me every time. Actually, he’s made me physically sick a few of those times, no complaints. That’s because his movies are always fun, like this one, where someone has been raised by mosquitoes. If you’ve seen his movies Guts, We Joined a Cultand We Forgot About the Zombies, you know what you’re in for here. Thank you again, Chris, for shocking me and reminding me to never eat popcorn — or any food — during your movies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
Ahhh, to be young again…when going to see a horror movie that you waited months for meant something.
The Substance is a rare moment in recent years where a movie exceeds expectations. The film’s marketing tricks audiences into thinking they’re seeing an elevated horror film and then punches them in the balls like horror movies did in the old days.
Elisabeth Sparkle, star of a popular morning exercise show, ages out of her job. Out of desperation, she turns to a black-market beauty treatment called “the substance,” which splits Sparkle into herself as she is now, and a younger, more “fantastic” version of herself, named Sue.
Of course, the treatment requires a very specific regiment that must be followed and “the balance must be respected.” Sparkle’s consciousness must hop bodies ever seven days without exception. The husk on the floor is set up with an IV drip to keep them going in the interim. Kind of like a corporeal timeshare. It’s not long before the single consciousness splits into two and form a rivalry that ultimately leads to self- abuse.
Demi Moore shines as brightly as she ever did here, carrying much of the film alone in a room by herself. Kudos to the casting director for casting the three love interests to reflect Moore’s own personal life. The nerdy guy she went to grade-school with named Fred (her first husband was a nerd named Freddie Moore), Sue’s hot hookup (an Ashton Kutcher look alike) and a guy who resembles Bruce Willis circa 1996.
Demi deserves an award just for all the practical makeup effects she endured let alone all the closeups of her body. Let’s talk about the close-ups. This film is filled with them. Right now, some freshman film student is licking their lips while writing about the film’s excessive use of the “male gaze.” But it isn’t. The Substance was directed by a woman. So whose gaze is it that lingers lustfully over Sue’s nubile young body in her pink leotard? Why, it’s everyone’s, of course. Every audience member takes away from film what they bring in with them. Women watching this film could just as easily look at the close-ups of Sue and wish they had those thighs.
Internalized misogyny aside, humans are inevitably a visual species. We automatically like attractive people, regardless of whether they’re good people or not. See Ted Bundy, Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise for reference.
I have vivid memories of the first time I ever envied Demi Moore’s hair. It was 1982 when I was ten years old, and I saw her played Jackie Templeton on General Hospital. I’ve loved her fashion sense and her acting ever since, although I never reached her level of awesome hair. Imitation in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls offers them an outlet to explore their own individuality that breaks off as we grow into young adults. In a sense, the substance allows Elisabeth to re-experience this phenomenon in the form of Sue.
Kids are being kids, Sue eventually decides she doesn’t want to go back every seven days as prescribed, and things go awry quickly. But it’s the older version who suffers. Because everything we do to our bodies in youth, we ultimately pay for later in life. Just ask my shin splints.
Along with penning a very smart screenplay, director Coralie Fargeat, herself 48, has clearly done her horror movie homework and absorbed the lessons of Basket Case, The Fly, The Elephant Man, Frankenhooker, Tetsuo and Carrie well. The film never feels preachy or pretentious. It manages to avoid feeling like a tired rip-off, despite using some sets, camera angles, and editing choices that audiences have seen before.
In fact, the art house crowd might feel like they’ve coaxed into a bait-and-switch during the last act, when the film spews more blood than the end of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive and features a full-blown Elisabeth/Sue Monstro parading down Hollywood boulevard in a frilly blue ballgown. A wonderfully satirical ending that will leave the old-school horror fans cheering for the “monster.” The level of the makeup effects The Substance brings to the table is outstanding. If you don’t like needles, it’s probably best to steer clear. For the rest, it’s a cringey, goopy and slimy good time.
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