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Saturday is Horror Day #141 – I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Violent Night

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Jennifer (Camille Keaton) heads to the Connecticut woods in order to write her first novel, having previously only written short stories. Fresh air, solitude, and country living should do it, right? But she quickly learns that all things in the country aren’t good or healthy.

On arrival in town, Jennifer gets gas at the local station, where she shares her excitement over the coming summer with the owner/attendant, Johnny (Eron Tabor). Later she meets Stanley (Anthony Nichols), who delivers her groceries. He is friendly and sweet, if a little slow. Seems like a good place. But she learns otherwise when she is laying out in her bikini in a boat and Johnny and a couple of his friends come upon her and decide to have some fun, in a brutal attack which they continue even after she thinks she has escaped from them. When they send Stanley in to finish the job, he can’t do it, and lets them think he has. So now it’s time for revenge.

I’m not going to lie, the rape scenes are brutal and hard to watch.  The poor actress also spends most of the film naked. I read that the actors asked to be naked as well in order to help make her feel more comfortable. This is a revenge film, pure and simple, and as such it succeeds, although certainly not a great film in any way. But the brutality of the rape makes the revenge that much more satisfying. I am going to watch the sequel, which was made like 40 years later, and hope it’s a better film. There is also a remake of the series, which I may or may not watch. But for now, I’ll give this film 3 Stars for succeeding in its primary goal.

Violent Night

Santa Claus (David Harbour) is jaded and weary, tired of the commercialism and cynicism of the modern world. He feels as if the spirit of Christmas has been lost, and he drinks to dull the pain. Trudy (Leah Brady) is a very bright little girl with only one wish for Christmas – that Dad (Alex Hassell) and Mom (Alexis Louder) make up and get back together again. They are all meeting at her Grandma Gertrude’s (Beverly D’Angelo) house, along with her aunt and uncle and their brat, Bertrude. The latter are all in a tizzy to make sure they stay in good with the wealthy grandma. But a criminal who calls himself Scrooge (John Leguizamo) has other ideas. This is a Christmas they won’t soon forget.

You’d think with a cast like this, and an interesting premise, this movie would be a shoe-in. I like David Harbour from Stranger Things and Hell Boy, and I have loved John Leguizamo for a long time, both for his stand-up and for such movie roles as Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge (we can forget his Mario Brothers Stint). But if you believe this, you will be sadly disappointed. The film doesn’t lack of looks, and it clearly had a decent budget. But there is nothing interesting or original about it. As my son son, it’s bland. It reminds me of a wanna-be copy of Die Hard. I was not just disappointed, I was bored, and I could imagine how everything was going to play out. I gave up after about thirty minutes. I suggest you just pass on this one.

Saturday is Horror Day #141 – A Monster Calls, Silent Night, Deadly Night 2

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

A Monster Calls

Twelve-year-old Conor (Lewis MacDougall) i8s having a rough life.  His mother (Felicity Jones) is dying, and the thought of living with his strict grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) is more than he can bear. On top of that, he is being bullied at school, and no one will come to his assistance. His dad (Toby Kebbell) lives in America now, and he has a new family, and he has no room for Conor. What’s a boy to do?

But then he encounter a monster in the form of a giant tree (Liam Neeson). While frightening at first, he helps Conor to cope with the reality of his existence. He tells Conor that he shall tell him three stories and then Conor will tell him his own story. Conor protests that he has no story to tell, but the Monster proceeds anyway with his tales.

I honestly did not know what to expect from this movie, but I was most pleasantly surprised. Twelve is

very young to have to deal with the impending death of one parent and the seeming indifference of the other, along with a grandmother he barely knows and doesn’t like. It’s a tale of bravery and imagination that will warm the coldest of hearts. It’s well written, acted, and directed. I really enjoyed it. I’ll give this film 4.5 Stars.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 2

Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman) was just a baby and his brother Billy only 7 when their family was attacked by a man in a Santa suit by the side of the road. Dad was shot and killed, and Mom was assaulted and murdered in front of her children. The two boys were sent to live in an orphanage run by Mother Superior (Jean Miller). Billy grew up haunted by what he had seen, and the nun was brutal in her punishments. He became a serial killer in a Santa suit himself.

Fast forward a number of years. Ricky is in a mental institution, being interviewed by the new psychiatrist.  He tells of his past family trauma, but he has plans of his own. Will history repeat itself?

Silent Night Deadly Night 2 picks up where the last one left off. But if you haven’t seen the first one,  no worries – this one recaps all of the highlights of that film, and that takes up about two-thirds of this movie. So you might as well skip the first one completely.

Let there be no doubt this movie is all about shock and gore and senseless violence. And women with bare breasts. The writing is horrible, the acting atrocious. It’s like watching a train wreck. And yet you find you can’t look away. If you don’t take it seriously, and just accept it for it is, you might not be sorry you watched it. I didn’t realize I’d already seen one of the scenes  in another video. Now I’ll never forget Garbage Day. All things considered, I’ll give this movie 2.5 Stars. I hear there are sequels. Might have to check them out.

Saturday is Horror Day #140 – M3gan

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

M3gan

Gemma (Allison Williams) is a robotics engineer at a toy company. She is frustrated to learn that the project she has been working on to produce a lifelike AI doll is not being greenlit. Despite that, she continues to work on it, confident that this will take the toy world by storm and be a major seller. When she unexpectedly becomes the guardian for her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw), she finishes the prototype and gives it to Cady, so the company will see what the doll, M3gan, can do.

Cady, devastated by the loss of her parents and having her life uprooted, takes to M3gan immediately. The AI becomes everything to her, and they become inseparable. Everything seems to be going well…until M3gan develops a mind of her own. And she won’t let anybody keep her down.

I’ve been wanting to see this for some time, so was glad of the opportunity to see it. I thought it was

interesting to watch, and the AI M3gan was quite chilling, and she had some interesting moves. I certainly wouldn’t want to cross her. Makes you think about the possible pitfalls of creating such an AI. But overall, it was a decent film, and I am looking forward to the sequel.  I’ll give this film 4 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #139 – Renfield

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

Renfield

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) was once a solicitor in his native England, living the good life, his future seemingly bright. But a fateful business trip to meet with a client in faraway Transylvania changed Renfield’s life forever. He became the minion of that client, Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), and now, years, later, he finds himself attending meetings of a group that deals with codependency. Listening to the stories of his fellow attendees, he realizes he can’t help them change themselves, but he can do something to the people who make their lives miserable.

Renfield and Dracula are now living in New Orleans, after Dracula was almost killed by vampire

hunters, so that he may recuperate. Renfield is fed up with suffering abuse in silent, which is why he begins to attend the 12-step program meetings. He decides to use the abusers to feed Dracula, in order to ameliorate his guilt for having sacrificed many innocent people in the past. But he ends up in conflict with a rival crime family, the Lobos, and he kills their assassin, which brings him to meet Detective Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina). One thing leads to another, and Renfield confesses his story to Rebecca, deepening the relationship between them, and ultimately leading to a confrontation with Dracula himself.

Renfield is a dark comedy/horror/fantasy film with a whole lot of gore thrown in for good measure. Nicholas Hoult is amazing as the beleaguered and fed-up minion who finally decides that enough is enough. As for Nic Cage, he plays the part of Dracula for all he’s worth, which is saying quite a lot. Campy, creepy, and yet somehow likeable. It’s clear he had fun with the role, and I had fun watching this movie. I loved Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians, and I loved her here, she is very talented and has great comedic timing. Just be aware that there is a great deal of blood, and if this is a trigger for you, maybe you should pass on this. I would love to see it again, and plan to do so.

I give Renfield 4.5 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #138 – Oculus

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

Oculus

Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillan) has an obsession  – she is determined to prove that it wasn’t her father who killed her and her brother Tim’s (Brenton Thwaites) mother, but rather supernatural forces. First she obtains the mirror once owned by her parents, at a dear price. Then she picks up her brother on his release from the mental institution where he has been incarcerated since he was a teen for the murder of his family. She needs his help and wants to prove everything to Tim as well.

Kaylie has everything set up, including multiple cameras and alarms, and even a fail-safe plan with a kill switch should everything else prove fruitless. Tim is skeptical but can’t convince his sister that she is wrong, helpless to stop her as they both recall the events that led them to this point.

Oculus flips back and forth from the past to the present, which is a little confusing at first as both Kaylie and her mom have red hair. In the past, we watch as the family unit disintegrates,  including the father’s own obsession with the mirror, the mother’s fears that he is losing him to another woman, and the helplessness of the children to do anything. Kaylie is trying to induce the mirror to kill again, and she wants to get it on video.

Oculus is certainly not a bad film, and its director, Mike Flanagan, no stranger to the genre, having also directed such films as Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Ouija: Origin of Evil. I like Karen Gillan and have ever since she played Amy Pond. But I found her character offputting her, almost like she was sleepwalking through everything. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but I couldn’t like anyone in this film and that becomes problematic when you have no one to root for.

Perhaps I couldn’t get behind the idea of the mirror itself as an evil entity – or was it something inside the mirror? Was the movie creepy? That it was. Did it hold my interest? Not really. I know there are a lot of favorable reviews, so it comes down to a matter of individual taste. And that, after all, is what reviews are about. I just couldn’t really get into it, and thought it availed itself of rather common tropes. But decide for yourself. As for me, I’ll give this film 3 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #137 – You Are Not My Mother

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

You Are Not My Mother

Char (Hazel Doupe) lives in North Dublin with her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) and her grandmother Rita (Ingrid Craigie). Life is tough for the young girl, with her grandmother in poor health and her mother often depressed and lying in bed. School is also hard and Char is often bullied because she doesn’t fit in with the other students. One morning, while taking Char to school, Angela announces that “she can’t do this anymore”, and later her car is found abandoned in a field. Char and Rita report her disappearance to the police, but little is done to find her.

A few days later, Angela returns, acting as if nothing has happened and all’s right with the world. But Char is suspicious of this “new” mother. Strange things happen, including the poisoning of Char’s Uncle Aaron. Char becomes friends with one of her former bullies, and confides the story of how her grandmother, believing her to be a changeling, placed her by a fire to get the real Char back. Her friend, Suzanne says the new Angela must also be a changeling and they have to repeat the fire ritual in order to get her real mother back.

I’ll just say this movie was not for me. It had nothing to do with it being a slow-paced, slow-burn kind of story, but I could never connect with it. Maybe because changelings are not a common theme here, I don’t know. But I couldn’t tell if the movie was really about changelings or about mental health issues, as it rather blurred the lines. The acting was good enough, but I was just not engaged. The film has a lot of positive reviews, but there are also others who did not like it. You’ll have to decide for yourself. I’ll give this movie 3 shaky Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day $136 – Cobweb

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

Cobweb

Peter (Woody Norman) is a shy, introverted boy with no friends, who is constantly bullied by is peers, especially by Brian (Luke Busey). When he hears tapping in his room at night, his parents, Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr) tell him he just has an overactive imagination and refuse to take him seriously. Even after he tells them someone is speaking to him.

Peter has a substitute teacher, Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman) who is concerned for him, especially after she sees a picture he painted which she interprets as a cry for help. She goes to the family home and speaks to Carol, who assures her that her son is fine, just imaginative. But the voice Peter hears continues, and encourages him to do things, one of which gets him expelled. His angry parents ground him, but not in his room. Instead, they make him stay in the dark dank basement.

Miss Divine, very concerned by now, comes by the house once more, ostensibly to give Peter his last paper, but she has written her phone number on it so he can reach her. The voice tells Peter that she is his sister and he must rescue her! And she says their parents have committed murder. In the meantime, Brian the bully decides, with the help of his older cousins, to get vengeance for what Peter has done to him. On Halloween night, of course.

I thought this film had possibilities at first. The idea of knocking on your wall in the middle of the night is terrifying, if handled well. But that isn’t the case here. The titular character of the sister reminds me of a spider-like version of Samara, the girl from The Ring. There are definitely things that don’t make sense here, such as why the parents chose to distance themselves from their oldest child, rather than help her. The sheer inhumanity of what they did to her is mind-boggling. From the beginning, they seemed off in their attitude toward Peter and to the world at large. A lot of the plot feels cliché, from the stereotypical bullying to the strange parents. The ending is odd, with Peter and his teacher locking the sister up again and her threatening to haunt him forever. Are they actually going to leave her to die? I assume the mother had been taking care of her. Also, how are they to explain all this to the authorities? What will become of Peter then? Looks like room for a sequel. I honestly don’t think it deserves it. I’ll give this film 2 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #135 – Wrong Turn (2021)

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

Wrong Turn (2021)

Scott Shaw (Matthew Modine) is concerned about his daughter, Jennifger (Charlotte Vega). She and her boyfriend, Darius (Adain Bradley), along with two other couples, Adam and Milla (Dylan McTee and Emma Dumont) and Gary and Luis (Vardaan Arora and Adrian Favela) left to hike the Appalachian Trail. But he hasn’t heard from Jennifer and he can’t reach her, so what else is a father to do, but head for the trail to look for her.

Six weeks previously, the three couples set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. They book rooms in a small

inn in a very small town and decide to go to a local bar for the evening, and begin the hike the next day. They quickly learn that not everyone in the deep woods is friendly to outsiders, and they almost rumble with some of the men at the bar. A well-meaning woman tries to discourage them from going, and warns them to never leave the trail. But when is good advice ever taken?

As they are hiking, and having a good time, Darius says he knows of a nearby fort that dates back to Civil War times and proposes a detour. Everyone goes along, although Jennifer reminds them of the woman’s words to stay on the trail. But Darius argues that it won’t take long and they’ll get back on track once more. Ah, the best laid plans…

Hopelessly lost in the woods, they make camp and go to bed. Jennifer thinks she sees a silhouette outside their tent in the middle of the night, but then decides it’s her imagination. Until the next day when all their phones go missing. Then an accident takes a life, someone goes missing, and Adam is dragged away on a chain. They had come across a plaque talking about an old group called The Foundation, formed prior to the Civil War. Is it possible that their descendants still live in the area? And if so, what is their intent toward the young people?

The only thing this film has in common with the other Wrong Turn films is the title.  Okay, same author, and also set in the woods. No inbred cannibals with bad make-up here. No gratuitous sex scenes. Not saying this is a great film by any means, but it is a cut above those others. I found the most interesting thing about this movie was the debate concerning right and wrong, and the willingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions. If one character hadn’t acted rashly, perhaps the other events would not have been triggered. On the other hand, those like the Foundation who choose to live by their own rules aren’t exactly role models either.

Jennifer is an interesting character, well acted. The ending suggests the possibility of a sequel or two. Hopefully we’ll see Matthew Modine again. I’ll keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, I’ll give this film 3 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #134 – The Sadness

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

The Sadness

After a year of combating a relatively mild pandemic, known as the Alvin virus, citizens are skeptical and become careless in taking precautions. Kat (Regina Lei) and Jim (Berant Zhu) had planned a week-long get-away, and Kat becomes upset when Jim tells her he has to work a shoot that week. He is sorry, but work is hard to get.  A discontented Kat heads to work.

Thanks to people’s negligence, the virus unexpectedly mutates, and the result is catastrophic. Blood and

violence erupt as those who are infected begin to rampage, the virus escalating the need for violence, including sexual assault.

While riding the subway, Kat is harassed by a businessman who won’t leave her alone. And as the virus begins to affect those around them, he becomes one of the casualties, releasing inner demons. And he is determined to have Kat. After great bloodshed, Kat escapes the subway and heads to the nearest hospital with a wounded young woman, Molly (Ying-Ru Chen). It’s closed but the two women are admitted so Molly can get treatment.

Jim and Kat text one another, and Kat gives Jim her location. He vows to get to her, to protect her. The question is, will she survive until he can arrive? And can he reach her in one piece with blood and mayhem everywhere?

The Sadness is a different take on a zombie film, with the infected having their limbic system invaded, crossing violence and sexuality in a horrific way. I have to warn you, this is not for everyone. There is a great deal of blood and sexual violence. Some may be triggered. It is riveting, as you wonder how it will turn out, and will this couple find their way to one another? Also, how will this carnage end? I think it was worth watching. I’ll give this film 4 Stars.

Saturday is Horror Day #133 – The Eternal Daughter, Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort

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Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes

The Eternal Daughter

Julie Hart (Tilda Swinton) and her elderly mother return to an eerily almost deserted hotel which was once their former home in order to find answers to unanswered questions. The hotel receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davies) is unpleasant at best, and not very cooperative. It doesn’t take long for the hotel to get to Julie, and she isn’t sure how much of it she can take.

I normally don’t read reviews before I watch something so that I can make up my own mind about a film.

In this cast, I wish I had made an exception to that rule. This is not a good movie, despite having Tilda Swinton in a double role, as both Julie and her mother. I suspected the truth from the outset and was proven correct at the end. What came in between beginning and end was not very scary nor interesting. In fact it wasn’t much of anything at all. My advice is to avoid this at all costs. I’ll give it 1 Star, just for Tilda.

Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort

An unexpected inheritance of a resort hotel in the middle-of-nowhere West Virginia brings Danny (Anthony Ilott) and his friends to investigate the windfall. The resort is being managed by Jackson (Chris Jarvis) and his sister Sally (Sadie Katz), who welcome their newly found kin with open arms. There is some confusion as to the relationship between Jackson and Sally, since she slides between calling him brother, husband, and cousin. But hey, it’s West Virginia, so some people have a different definition of family.

Danny’s girlfriend Toni (Aqueela Zoll) isn’t sure she likes this place, nor Danny’s new kinfolk. Especially Sally.  But if she could read Sally’s mind, she would like her even less. Strange things began to happen and people are getting hurt. And they begin to discover that maybe there are other people here who are, let’s say less than normal. Toni wants to leave, but Danny is adamant that he wants to get to know his family better, and they him (especially Sally). But at what price?

Well, I managed to finish watching this one, which is more than I can say for the three that came before it, which should tell you something. I sit great cinema? No, but it’s done fairly well considering the writing and the horrible plot. I think part of the reason it is better is that there are fewer of the inbred freaks, and the two family members with the most interaction appear deceptively normal. Jackson is even considered by some of the older female guests as very charming and attractive and they like to attract his attention in silly ways. Even if that attraction turns deadly.

Once again, I could have done without the gratuitous sex scenes, but whatever. If that’s your cup of tea, so be it. If you like cannibalism and gore, you might enjoy this. There is one more in the series (as of this writing0 and I read somewhere it was good, so I guess I’ll let you know when I watch it. In the meantime, I’ll give this film 2 Stars.