I’m a huge fan of John Russo, so when I learned that a documentary of his life was getting made — thanks to director James Harland Lockhart V — I was worried. Would someone love Russo and his contributions to horror as much as me? Would they treat him either too reverently or like too much of a joke? To be honest, I didn’t get to watch this as soon as I should have and I made a big mistake.
Because it’s really great.
It helps that Russo wrote this and basically it’s an on camera interview of him discussing his career. That way, we get it unfiltered, with him explaining what it was like to be one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead and work with the mythic cast and crew. From the actual filming to him wanting to go to court and sue the Walter Reade Organization for the money they stole from the filmmakers, it’s a passionate section of this movie, just as you would hope that it would be.
As a Pittsburgher, I also love that he went to Oyster Bar owner Louis J. Grippo as his counsel.
I’ve seen a few reviews on Letterboxd making light of the fact that this movie spends twenty minutes on Night of the Living Deadand then moves on to Russo’s other movies. Look, I love that movie. I own so many copies of it, I grew up minutes from the cemetery and I’ve watched it more times than I can even count. But everyone knows just about everything there is, down to the fact that Russo, Bill Hinzman and Gary Streiner were both set on fire making the movie.
What we don’t know is about Russo’s other films.
There’s some dirt on Return of the Living Deadand how Romero and Russo couldn’t agree on the sequel they had planned. The compromise was that Russo would get “Living Dead” for his titles and Romero would own “of the Dead.” That said, due to mistakes in how the original movie was retitled, it was already all in the public domain. Throughout, however, Russo speaks glowingly of Romero but not of Dawn of the Dead producer Richard P. Rubinstein.
Ass one of the biggest fans of Midnight and The Majorettes, so getting to hear behind the scenes info — much less learn the alternate British title of the latter is One by One because they have no idea what majorettes are overseas — is exactly why I’m watching this.
He also discusses how difficult it was to work with 21st Century on the remake of Night without mentioning Menahem Golan. I was concerned with how he’d discuss working with Karl Hardman, Hinzman and Streiner on the poorly received 30th anniversary remix, much less Children of the Dead, a film that he is very honest about. That movie is shot near the biggest swingers club in miles and you can see the bowling alley my uncle played league games in while zombies are eating people.
When I was in my late teens, I was obsessed with seeing Heartstopper. It’s on this! Santa Claws? You know it. For a Russo superfan like me — who has a signed Midnight poster in a place of honor in my movie room, despite being stained with coffee from Russo’s mug — you can’t believe how exciting this all is, even if it misses out on things like Midnight 2, his Scream Queens softcore magazine, Monster Makeup, Horror Rock, Horror Effects with Tom Savini, Scream Queens’ Naked Christmas and Zombie Jamboree: The 25th Anniversary of Night of the Living Dead, which is nearly a home movie of Russo walking around the old Monroeville Expo Mart during a convention. But I realize that my mania will go deep and want to know such minutiae when others just want to hear about his first movie.
I mean, seeing the Calgon commercials — I grew up near the plant — and hearing Russo discuss them is why I’m going to watch this again.
There have been some discussions about the audio quality of this but I didn’t notice. I watch everything with close captions, so I had no issues. Then again, this is the kind of material that I’m going to pay close attention to. So yes, I may not be the most unbiased of reviewers on this — I feel like this was made for me — but if you have even the slightest interest in one of the most important American horror films ever made and the man who helped make it, this is well worth you taking the time to see this documentary.
You can watch this on Tubi or buy the DVD/blu ray here.
Named in honor of the wild collections of short genre fiction curated by the luminary author Harlan Ellison, CFF’s Dangerous Visions block has long been the dark heart of their short film program each year, and this year, there were too many fantastic horror and sci-fi shorts for a single block to contain them so they’ve expanded things to include our virtual SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE DANGEROUS VISIONS block. No summer spent at Camp CFF is complete without the heaping helping of HOLY SHIT that are these two blocks!
13th Night (2024): Directed by Benjamin Percy, this is a film all about the lengths a father will undertake to save his daughter, who has become ill with a chronic condition. It starts with the subtitle “sounds of murder” and we see a man taking a Polaroid photo of someone he has killed via s shovel to the throat before cutting to the title.
The long haired man who did the killing comes home to his daughter, asleep in bed as cartoons play on the TV. He has a massive arsenal of bladed weapons, just as she has an array of prescriptions near her nightlight. He falls asleep after drinking — and checking the locks to the basement — before discovering that all of the locks have been removed. A strange man in a suit and American tie appears, says “Hello, Jacob. It’s time.” He passes the demonic figure the Polaroid of his last murder and is told on the 13th of the next month, he must kill again. The always smiling man passes pills to him and tells Jacob that he didn’t promise a cure for his daughter, but he did tell her that she will have a heartbeat. However, their arrangement can end tonight if he wants his daughter to die.
Then, the demon appears to his daughter and Jacob knows that he’s stuck in this arrangement.
This short has some confident camera work, gorgeous lighting and really solid sound design. In fact, I’d love to see this become a full length feature, as it feels like there’s so much more of the story to tell. You can learn more on the official site.
Butterscotch (2023): A young boy (Reid McConville) spends several moments in a nursing home tormenting a man (Clifford Deeds) who obviously can’t move and may not be aware of what is happening around him. As the child whistles and waves in front of his face, we notice that the entire room is blue and the only other color is provided by the comic book red hue of the kid’s hair. He steals a piece of butterscotch candy from the man — I’ve often heard only old people like this candy, so I must have been old my whole life — and then notices that the senior citizen is sticking his tongue out at him and bugging his eyes. I won’t spoil what happens next in director Alexander Lee Deeds’ short but sometimes, people get what they deserve.
Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded (2023): Kyle Garrett Greenberg and Anna Maguire directed and wrote this short, which stars Maguire. She plays Anna, who is visiting a new lover in Los Angeles. We notice that her kitchen has wine and weed, which she uses before she goes out the door and talks on the phone with a friend, discussing how easy it is to get lost here, how everything feels so extra. Before too long, all the neighborhood watch signs seem to come alive and the idea that everyone is filming her becomes too much to bear. This takes the horror in the mundane, the everyday and shows how we can feel like an alien within our own world, even if it’s just in a different city. I once got lost in Tokyo trying to make a pay phone call and couldn’t remember which of the many similar apartment buildings my friend lived in. I just wandered the streets until he found me and he just laughed. This is sort of like that and kind of like how I tried to take a video of a cute dog last week to show my wife and a neighbor — with faith over fear and Trump flags all over her house — came out and accused me to potentially stealing her dog. Have you ever tried to steal a chihuahua?
Let’s Go Disco (2024): Austin Lewis, along with writers Jake Gates Smith, Alexis Stier and Megan Stier created this tale of a woman trapped inside, you guessed it, a disco. The colors as if they’re living in a Mario Bava nightmare and the pulsing beat was enough to set my dog barking. Fog fills the air as the disco ball spins and soon, she finds her way to a table of people who know her but she has no clue who they are. She overhears stories of people getting killed by an axe murderer as laughter fills the soundtrack and even drinks being delivered feel sinister. The cab ride home is no escape either and she comes back all over again, as the girls become more violent with her, saying that she’s going to stay there and do whatever they say.
Wow. Just wow. This movie knocked me out. You have to see it whenever you get the opportunity because it looks and plays perfect, getting more done in its 12 minute run time than any film that I’ve seen go over two hours. If you’ve ever felt trapped in public, this will make your hands shake as much as it did mine. Also: So much screaming.
Accidental Stars (2024): Aspiring actress Nerissa (Madeleine Charmaine Morrell) has been attending David’s (Kyle Minshew) acting class as part of her dream of being a star. But it’s not enough and if she wants to have him love her work, she needs to be part of his private lessons. Yet all the pressure is seemingly too much for her. After all, this starts with the T.S. Elliot line from Hysteria, “As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.”
Directed and written by Emily Bennett, this makes the experience of acting feel like being a captive. I wonder if that’s what it’s like. I’ve found that being a writer is like having homework every day for the rest of your life, so maybe dreams kind of come true, even if you’re not ready for what they are.
Maybe I’m glad I never became an actor.
The Influencer (2023): Director and writer Lael Rogers has made a tale of a social media influencer whose dream day is being able to harvest the eyes and minds of her followers as she reaches for immortality. I mean, all those numbers on the live stream have to go somewhere.
This not only embodies the influencer characters that the characters — Ivy (Deisy Patiño), Shea (Laura Hetherington) and Madison (Mackenzie Wynn) — are all about, but the film effortlessly makes the switch over to horror with no issues, as the true influencer (Bria Condon) rises from the sea and guides the women to the sea.
Now I understand why”You all give me life” sounds so horrifying.
Pitstop (2024): A prisoner, Quinn (Emily Sweet) and a guard, Hannah (Mary Rose Branick) are stranded and out of gas. I’d say this only happens in movies, but it used to happen to my in laws all the time. The dialogue suggests that the world they live in is split between a walled-off city run by the government and a resistance who lives outside the walls. Quinn tries to reach out to Hannah and explain what she believes to be the truth, but she refuses to listen.
Quinn has been playing with a paperclip and is able to unlock her handcuffs, which causes the two to fight. As Hannah discharges her weapon, they hear a growl which belongs to a creature (Deryk Wehrley) that can embody your worst fear. Somehow, this brings the two closer or at least able to talk to one another. I really liked how director and writer David A. Flores has put together this story and I’d love to see where these two characters go next.
Souling (2023): An unsuspecting woman (Jacquelyn Ferguson, who also directed and wrote this with Jason Anders, who is one of the disturbing people who gather) finds herself at the center of an ancient Pagan tradition when she was just trying to take a bubble bath.
According to the filmmakers, this modern-day folk tale was inspired by a medieval practice that led to trick-or-treating. There’s a banquet put in front of the woman, who stares at the sack masked faces of those who have sat around her table, finally grabbing fistfuls of food and devouring it before enlightenment arrives.
While I’m not entirely sure what it all means, but I did learn that Souling was done during Allhallowtide and Christmastide. It included eating soul cakes (“sets of square farthing cakes with currants in the centre”) singing, carrying lanterns, wearing a costume, setting bonfires, playing divination games (including one that has been slightly altered to become bobbing for apples), carrying a horse’s head around and performances.
I kind of want to try Souling now.
The Thaw (2023): In 19th century Vermont, a young woman named Ruth (Emily Bennett) watches as her parents Alma (Toby Poser) and Timothy (Jeffrey Grover) drink sleeping tea in order to survive the harsh winter. They can only be awakened in the spring and she will be left alone, allowed to slaughter the sheep if she needs to. However, seeing as how this is a New England folk horror story, things don’t work out as they planned as there’s an early thaw.
Directed and written by Sean Temple and Sarah Wisner, this finds Ruth in this situation because her husband has returned her to her family. She speaks to her mother and cries, “He said I wasn‘t worth the cost of my keep.” Men are uniformly horrible to women in this, blamed for everything, including making the tea incorrectly, which keeps Alma asleep as if she were dead. Now, Timothy is filled with a hunger that can’t end and as they run out of canned and live food, he may start turning his eye to the living. Or, in the case of Alma, the asleep.
Filmed in black and white, this is stunning. Its monotone look and setting will remind some of Robert Eggers, but this can definitely stand on its own. In fact, it deserves to be its own full length feature.
Dream Creep (2023): David (Ian Edlund) and Suzy (Sidney Jayne Hunt) are asleep when she wakes him up. Someone is in their room and wants to attack her. However, they soon learn that the sounds that she hears are coming from inside her ear. The voice soon tells him that if he wakes her up, she’ll die. Well, what happens if she stays asleep?
Director and writer Carlos A.F. Lopez does so much with sound design and pacing in this. This is the kind of movie that you’ll wake up and think about as you watch your partner sleeps and hope that you never go through the horrific moments that these two do. It saves the grisly parts for the close but don’t worry. They’re coming.
You can watch so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
If this was called, How O.J. Simpson Impacted Harvey Levin of TMZ, I doubt that many people would have watched it. But that’s what it’s about and to be honest, it’s kind of fascinating to hear one person’s life over two years be impacted by the case that would kick off the 24 hour news cycle and then give him the ability to start TMZ.
Levin found an interesting path into founding the site that more people turn to now than the National Enquirer for their celebrity news. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he graduated with a B.A. in political science and then got a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School. He was an attorney in the state of California for two decades and also wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times and was Dr. Law on a radio show.
He then started to work for KNBC and KCBS as an investigative reporter and legal analyst. The O.J. trial was his major story before he was the co-executive producer and on-air legal anchor for a revised version of The People’s Court. He also created the show Celebrity Justice. In 2005, AOL and Telepictures Productions launched TMZ, which has had Levin as the founder and managing editor ever since.
So what really happened on June 12, 1994? That’s what this special tries to explain and to my surprise, Levin is the perfect person to tell this story. He covered O.J. Simpson’s murder trial from start to finish. There are insider parts about untold lie detector tests and even speculation about who helped Simpson get away with the murders.
TMZ spoiled some of this special by reporting “O.J. Simpson went back to the scene of the crime — where he killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman — and our own Harvey Levin happened to be there and a wild chase ensued.”
In this TMZ special, Harvey claims that he drove a friend to Nicole’s condo where the murders occurred. They saw a limo in the alley and as soon as the driver made eye contact with him, he drove away.
If you haven’t had enough O.J. — and Tubi has been full of O.J. stories lately — here’s one more way to get your Juice fix.
In the woods of Amityville, scientists whose lab once occupied the very space that the house on 112 Ocean Avenue sat have somehow captured Bigfoot, conducting a series of experiments on him. He escapes and runs wild in the woods, all while a film crew is shooting their own Bigfoot movie, local birdwatchers seek an elusive species and protestors who want an end to Amityville movies all gather in one place to become victims.
This movie has almost everything that an Amityville movie should, which is a great name and a better poster, even if that looks like Kong exploding from the familiar windows of the De Feo home. It does not, however, have any taglines.
Directed by Shawn C. Phillips, who co-wrote it with Julie Anne Prescott and is on his ninth trip to Amityville, (he directed Amityville Shark House and Amityville Karen and acted in Amityville Webcam, Amityville Job Interview, Amityville Frankenstein, Amityville Thanksgiving, Amityville In the Hood and Amityville Hex) has put together yet another movie that has no ties to the original other than you’ve seen both movies.
He also plays Ian, the leader of the scientists who lose Bigfoot, leading one of them named Annie (Lauren Francesca, who was the Amityville Karen) to be assaulted by the creature, who she claims “Has the biggest dick I’ve ever had.” The Amityville Bigfoot which acts a lot more like the sasquatch in Night of the Demonthan a friendly skunk ape. Is there such a thing as an amiable abominable snowman?
As for that movie in the woods, its director Claude (Brandon Krum) is having issues with his producer father Harv (Phillip Krum) and his main actress, Francesca (Ashleeann Cittell). And somehow, in the middle of all of this — Bigfoot sexual, fecal and urine assaults abound — Eric Roberts and Tuesday Knight appear. There’s also a scene where Bigfoot pushes a baby carriage with a dog inside it down a hill and this is played for comedy.
This wouldn’t be an Amityville movie without ten minutes at the end of videos sent in by people who paid to be in the movie, as well as news footage that pads out the running time. There’s also lots of ad libbed dialogue, people talking on and on when they never would in real life and so much screaming. Yet it looks a lot better than most Amityville or Bigfoot movies, so I guess that’s some faint praise.
NOTE: Ryan Stockstad informed me: “Just a small correction: the producer’s father was played by Brandon Krum’s actual father Phillip Krum, not G. Larry Butler! Larry plays one of the hobos in the woods;)”
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.
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:”
My wife asking me during this movie, “Did cowboys really swear so much?” I figured this movie was just following the lead of Deadwood, but I decided to do some research. According to Notes from the Frontier, they both did and didn’t. Jesse Sheidlower, the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the book The F-Word says, “There were cursing contests when cowboys would get together and insult each other. Evidence that we have is that they were using more religious blasphemy than the sexual insults which are popular today.” That’s because using the f-word didn’t come into use in the U.S. until after World War I. That said, the same article says that Stagecoach Mary, Belle Starr — and this film’s star! — Calamity Jane all were historically known to use tons of profanity.
Directed by Terry Miles (Even Lambs Have Teeth) and written by Leon Langford and Collin Watts, this is the story of — you guessed it from the title — Calamity Jane (Emily Bett Rickards, Felicity from Arrow) getting revenge on the man who killed her soon-to-be husband, Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, who was Green Arrow on Arrow and the lead in Heels).
Most of what we know about Calamity Jane — born Martha Jane Canary — comes from an autobiographical pamphlet that she dictated and sold as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. As you can imagine, a lot of the story in that pamphlet is exaggerated. She claims that her name came from a battle with Native Americans: “When fired upon, Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan, on recovering, laughingly said: “I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.” I have borne that name up to the present time.”
Then again, another story of her life — not written by her — said, “She never saw a lynching and never was in an Indian fight. She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular.”
How realistic is this film’s claim that Wild Bill was married to her?
On September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare granted old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick. Jean claimed to be the daughter of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok and had evidence that they were married at Benson’s Landing, Montana on September 25, 1873. She also had a letter from Jane that said that she had been married to Hickok and that he was het birth father. She was then placed for adoption with a Captain Jim O’Neil and his wife.
When she died — of alcoholism — according to Michael Griske’s The Diaries of John Hunton: Made to Last, Written to Last: Sagas of the Western Frontier, “Four of the men who planned her funeral later stated that Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Jane while he was alive, so they decided to play a posthumous joke on him by burying her by his side.”
The truth is always difficult to divine.
Let’s talk about the movie.
When Jane and Bill make it to Deadwood, they finally decide to walk the aisle. Except that he can’t leave behind the chance to play cards and that ends with Jack McCall (Primo Allon) killing him. As you can imagine, McCall gets out of town before Jane can catch him after she easily escapes from the jail of Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozen).
Mason starts a posse to hunt down both Jane and McCall, as well as a criminal that Jane was in jail with — and who started the riot that got her out — by the name of Abigail (Priscilla Faia) starts to stalk her.
If you’re an Arrow fan, this mini-reunion doesn’t last long. So you may be let down. This also feels like way more talking than action, but the fight between Jane and Abigail is pretty great. I also liked the undertaker character who gets Jane through the Badlands, even if he’s barely in this. But hey — I’m all for new Westerns getting made.
I have to tell you, I drove my wife nuts by saying the name of this movie over and over again.
This starts with Monica (J. Roppolo Jacobs) trying to call her daughter Verity (Evelyn Giovine) — or V as everyone seems to call her — from a pay phone after she causes an incident at a mega church by calling Pastor Dean Humphries (Damon Dayoub) a “hypocritical bastard.” She barely gets a message sent before she’s cut off, just as her daughter is in the midst of shaking down someone along with her boyfriend Sam (Greg Finley). As the man runs, Sam takes a shot at him and steals a car while a convenience store owner gets a clear view of both of their faces. V breaks up with him, something that seems to be a long time coming, and heads to The Devil’s Dive, a bar where her foster sister Ruby (Raquel Davies) works.
After doing some research into where her mother was — yes, there are still payphones, as her sister reminds her — she is contacted by Detective Peter Frederick (Daniel Link). They’ve found her mother’s body and she has to identify her. We soon discover that Peter might be V’s father and he definitely wants to discuss her relationship with Sam, the money they owe to drug dealer Ricky and the beating of the man the other night. She runs and decides that there’s no way the police can handle this investigation, so she has to infiltrate the church where her mother died.
To do that, she has to become The Sintern.
After meeting the Pastor and his wife Heidi (Stefanie Estes), V renames herself Chastity and becomes part of the marketing team for the church. Despite being on the bad side of longtime parishioner Louann (Judy Kain), she wins over everyone, including the social media officer Kayle (Phuong Kubacki) — the brownies help — and singer Gage (Samuel Larsen), who leads the church’s choir in worship. V — or Chastity, as she’s now called — now understands the sin of illicit thoughts every time she sees Gage make an altar call.
Of course Chastity is able to figure out exactly who killed her mother, get the boy to fall in love with her and get away from her criminally minded ex-boyfriend. She also gets to bond with her foster sister all over again, who conveniently is going to college for marketing. As I was watching this while doing my day job in advertising, I just kept yelling at the TV (when I wasn’t making up songs about The Sintern).
Directed by Julie Herlocker (who was a producer on Millennium and Grimm) and written by Jeff Dickamore and Aurora Florence, this presents a level-headed look at a church — despite the murder and sexual mania of its leaders, the followers are there for good reasons — and has a heroine who moves past her upbringing to become a capable heroine willing to do nearly anything to expose the truth. Also, as I love exploitation, bonus points for — spoiler warning — Pastor father nearly assaulting her, followed by her puking up her guts when she realized that any daddy issues that she had in the past are about to be multiplied beyond belief. Double word score — or whatever — for the fact that Pastor Peter doesn’t really know much of the Bible and seems to make things up, which others call out and which confuses our heroine, who doesn’t know much of the Psalms.
On a final note, I always get weirded out when religious people drop the name and location of their Bible quote. Like, you’d say, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.” And then follow it with Psalm 30:11. You don’t see me closing my movie quotes with where they appeared, like “You wanted to kill me! What are you gonna do now, huh? Now death is coming for you! You wanted to kill Helena Markos! Hell is behind that door! You’re going to meet death now… the LIVING DEAD!” Suspiria, an hour and five minutes in.
When The Strangers came out in 2008, it had mixed reviews, which didn’t matter. It became a cult film. It has characters that have such a good look to them and the end of the film, where Dollface explains it all by telling the couple that they were attacked “Because you were home,” which was enough in the quality starved mid 2000s. The sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, changes influences from the 1970s to the 1980s. While it also has its audience, it’s really twenty good minutes looking for a movie to be part of.
Imagine how surprised I was when Lionsgate announced that director Renny Harlin and writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland would be making three new films in this series, all in a row, all shot in Slovakia. Is this the 2000s all over again?
Intellectual property is insidious. Sure, we love seeing sequels of the films that we love. But when an IP is a success, we can be sure that we’ll see numerous remakes and reimaginings of every horror property there is — except for Friday the 13th, right? — again and again.
Where this movie changes the game — slightly, ever so slightly — is by having its leads Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) traveling across the country and being forced to stay overnight in Venus, Oregon, as opposed to visiting their summer home in the midst of a relationship crisis.
Harlin has stated that this trilogy was intended to be neither a remake nor reboot. He was also aiming to get the tone close to the first movie, despite plans to explore who the killers are and where they come from. This suggests to me that what made the original so great — there’s no motivation for the killers other than they need something to do — is similar to why Halloween remains the best film in that series. It’s all about keeping things simple as well as scary.
Producer Mark Canton also says that these three movies are all about introuducing audiences to the world of The Strangers and that they want to expand that world Also, these movies take place in the same universe as the original two films. Harlin also told ComicBook.com, “We, of course, shot them on top of each other and mixed up, like movies are always made. But we had to keep in mind that this is one story arc. It is one 4.5 hour movie, and the first movie is a first act. It sets up the characters and the terror and the Killers and our main character, who will survive the first movie, but then go on a journey for the next two.” The thought is that these movies will show four days in the life of Maya.
The problem with shooting three movies at the same time is that the first movie better knock you out. And this, well…remember when Gus Van Zant remade Psycho and people wondered why it was shot for shot? At least that was a classic film that had several decades in between. This just feels like watching a fan film of the original. Sure, it looks great, but it’s missing the menace that the first take had, the moments of looking out into nothingness, wondering what is out there waiting. That’s one of the most terrifying things in real life and The Strangers captured it flawlessly.
None of the masked characters are actors from the other films. The Man In the Mask is now called Scarecrow and he’s played by Matúš Lajčák while Dollface is Olivia Kreutzova and Pin-Up Girl is Letizia Fabbri.
It took Michael Myers six movies to find the Thorn Cult and Jason ten movies to go to space. Who knows where these films are going to go? Will we see other people make their own karaoke versions of mid-level slashers? Will I be enraged when Zack Snyder remakes The Prowler and Michael Bay shows us his vision of The Being? But we all lived through the Platinum Dunes era, when the films we once loved were strip mined and made into barely recognizable films with pretty kids getting killed by CGI versions of the murderers we once cheered for.
I am reminded that Harlin also made A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning. Then again, he did make Deep Blue Sea, the movie that taught me that LL Cool J’s head is like a shark fin. Maybe I should be patient and see where he goes with this. But man, how many chances has this guy got? For every The Long Kiss Goodnight there’s Cutthroat Island, but then again, he also made Prison, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Die Hard 2. I feel too old and too limited in the time that I watch movies — yes, I know, I watch like four a day — to sit through three of these movies only to say, “Eh.” Maybe I want too much, you know?
At least the Spirit Store will have official masks for all the Hot Topic kids to wear this Halloween.
Eh, that feels like I’m being a gatekeeper. Perhaps this will lead people to discovering better movies.
After a spring break vacation to Miami, three friends — Maika (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut), Taylor (Rachel Leyco) and Shay (Jada Elena Wooten) are blamed when the fourth member of their squad, Autumn (Annalisa Cochrane) goes missing. As she is a social media influencer, the story becomes picked up by the media and it puts the girls even more in the spotlight.
As told through flashbacks, we learn that at one point, Autumn was the girl who pushed the others to be wilder and go after the boys and girls they were interested in. But as the story unfolds, we soon discover that perhaps she wasn’t the best friend to everyone. Meanwhile, Maika’s father Zion (Derek Roberts) tries to coach the girls through what they should say to the police, triggering Shay as she remembers Autumn doing her makeup and revealing that she knows that she has a drug addiction.
Autumn also has a new guy by the name of Cameron (Christopher Collins) and his OCD is so bad that he does everything in three, keeps all of his clothes and records footage of his house that he watches over and over. He’s also a drug dealer and treats them to hard seltzer and cocaine. He also tells Detective McAvoy (Lauren O’Quinn) later that he thinks that before she disappeared, Autumn had a fight with Maika.
That’s when Maika gets a text from someone named “I Know Who Killed Me” saying that she knows what she did. Whoever it is, it also posts a photo of her and Julian (Zachary S. Williams) to make her look bad and anger her boyfriend Brandon (Phillip Patrick Wright). Taylor thinks that Cameron is the one behind the account.
Autumn is always getting into other people’s faces, as well as using her friend’s issues against them and going after the boys that they’re interested in. But they’ve all known one another forever and generally, you stay friends with people like this, at least in high school.
But then they find Autumn’s body and Cameron flips out, thinking that he’s going to jail. This brings up the past again, as Autumn posts a photo of Maika and Julian as he tries to kiss her. Back to our time and “I Know Who Killed Me” is accusing everyone of the murder. It all leads to the girls using the media to try and clear their names.
Directed by Tim Cruz (The Final Rose) and written by Jackie Logsted (Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl, Rush for Your Life), this has two major twists left that change the entire story. That said, you’re going to have to watch it yourself to see what happens next. This another example of Tubi originals getting better and having stories that make you stick with them.
At the end of War of the Worlds: Annihilation, General Skuller (William Baldwin) is taking spaceships into space to colonize — attack — other planets after the planet Earth — destroyed by years of pollution — comes after the planet Emios. He sends Alice (April Mae Davis) through the wormhole that connects the two planets and has her use the Terra Modus to destroy our homeworld by creating a series of natural disasters.
Earth’s defenses are led by General Alfaro (Michael Paré), who coincidentally has an ex-wife named Sybil (Kate Hodge) and a daughter named Jill (Jessy Holtermann) who are studying that very same device. Yes, it’s the battle we’ve always wanted: Baldwin vs. Paré! Where does Eric Roberts stand in all of this?
Directed by Christopher Ray (Fred Olen Ray’s son; he also directed Mercenaries, Almighty Thor and Mega Shark vs. Kolossus) and written by Marc Gottlieb ( Time Pirates) — and produced by The Asylum — this really makes you wonder who the heroes and who the villains are. Maybe there aren’t any when it comes to war? Maybe we have no real choice over who are leader is going to be because both options are the worst possible? Is The Asylum making a deep point for us to consider? No, of course not. They just want to use disasters footage from other movies and have another series of movies to make money from. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what exploitation is all about.
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