Day 24: Odd Thomas (2013) 1h 37m

First off, RIP Anton Yelchin.  It's kind of a shame that you'll be known more as Chekov in the Star Trek reboots than anything else.  Not that I'm saying Odd Thomas should be the number one thing he's known for, but he should get recognition for this.  It was a fun horror comedy.

Odd Thomas (which is literally his name) has psychic abilities as well as the ability to see ghosts and demon-like entities that thrive on feeding off evil, chaos, and death.  After noticing a large group of these demons following "Fungus Bob" around, Odd begins to uncover an insane mass murder plot for the devil.  Not that the devil asked for it, but some fake "satanic" stuff gets thrown in and the plan is to do it for Satan and then probably some sort of honor.  This sounds really random but it's because I don't want to give too much away.  Why?  Because you should see it.

I'm not sure how true it is to the Dean Koontz book of the same name as I've never read any Koontz.  For some reason, despite him being a contemporary of Stephen King, I never see a Koontz books and think of supernatural thrillers.  King's son Joe Hill?  Sure.  Brian Keene?  Yes, Dean Koontz? Idkwtfbbq.

Regardless of the source material and your knowledge of or inexperience with it, Odd Thomas made me think of films like John Dies at the End (which I mention on here a lot) and Shawn of the Dead.  I'm not saying it's as good as those films in overall humor, but it's not far off.

I give Odd Thomas 4 unrelated but sweet lizard men images out of 5:

Day 23: Indigenous (2014) 1h 26m

Evil is out there.  It's all around us.  On the smile of every child. In every mylar birthday balloon of Dora the Explorer.  Anytime a group of entitled white Americans go to a foreign country and ignore local legends...

Indigenous, itself, is evil.  Not the good kind of evil that exists in King Diamond albums or D&D games, but the kind of evil that makes you angry that it exists.  That it's so far on the opposite end of a spectrum that there has to be something amazingly good to make up for how bad this is; something sainthood good.

IMDB's description of Indigenous is only "American Tourists travel to Panama and have a very terrifying experience."  The terrifying experience is a Chupacabra, which looks like your typical pasty white skin, razor teeth, and milk white pupil vampire style monster.  The only break-out moment of this film comes with the addition of a special device the one person is beta testing that allows for instant uploads to social media.  This makes it so a very Blair Witch style video hits Facebook and the world picks up on it in real time.  Everything else in this film is overdone crap.

Indigenous isn't worth the time.  Once again, this is a film that I needed to cleanse my horror pallet after it.

I give Indigenous 0 Deviant Art chupacabras out of 5:

Day 23: He Never Died (2015) 1h 39m

I have to begin this review with full disclosure:  I have a Black Flag tattoo,  I own almost every book Henry Rollins has ever written, I have seen Rollins Band live, I have seen Henry Rollins do spoken word live, I have DVDs of Henry Rollins doing spoken word live, I have many random and terrible movies because he is in them.  The point is that I am a fan of Henry Rollins and the work he does.

However, this does not rose tint my perception of him as an actor.  I know that he isn't the greatest actor.  Hell, he knows he isn't the greatest actor and has said so on many an occasion.  With that out of the way, as He Never Died went on, I think he just might have been the right person for this film.

A simple rundown of the film goes as such:  Henry Rollins plays Jack.  Jack pretty much doesn't care about much of anything and just has his routine.  He has an air of "seen it all," so he is pretty blasé to the world.  We come to find he has a daughter, but more importantly that he can't be killed.  People keep trying, and a lower level mob is involved, but after his daughter is kidnapped he finally takes an interest to the world.

There's much more to the story such biblical and supernatural tie-ins, but in truth I don't want to spoil those.  As a whole, the film did start a bit slow and I wasn't sure how to take Henry's flat affect.  Although as time went some actual character began to peak out before he gets his actual definition in the world.  Hearing things like "I remember I hate you" in such a deadpan tone is actually really funny and, in truth, Jack's dryness makes the emotional moments have a greater impact.

I give He Never Died 3.5 pictures of Henry Rollins holding a cobra that I screen capped from the Illumination video out of 5:

Day 22: The Barn (2016) 1h 36m NEW ORLEANS HORROR FILM FEST SPECIAL EDITION PART 2 of 2!

Continuing with our special New Orleans Horror Film Fest edition of reviews here at 30 Days of Plight, I bring to you an 80's throwback film entitled The Barn.

Every town has their ghost stories.  Where I grew up we had one about "Becky's Grave," which was a grave set back on some farm property.  As I got older there were other ones I found out about as you moved further out.  There's the underwater ex-town of Livermore, PA, or the child's grave in the basement of the Lawrenceville Library in Pittsburgh, PA.  In case you can't tell from that I lived in Western PA a long time.  Why do I bring any of this up in a review about a film?

The Barn focuses on one of these handed down ghost tales.  The story is that if you knock on a specific barn three times and say trick-or-treat then three spirits from hell come to kill you.  The first being the Boogyman, who dresses like a miner because he helped the devil create a tunnel from hell and some miners came across it.  I'll actually buy that story for this film.  The second being Pumpkin Jack who reminds me a lot of Samhain from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  He apparently works as the lookout for the trio because he can enter any pumpkin or jack-o-lantern to watch or take form.  The final is the Candy Corn Scarecrow, who feels like the most random of the bunch as he has candy corn teeth and bites the fuck out of people.  I forget what his role is specifically.  Our group of teens just so happen to be heading to a concert and come across the barn without knowing that it is the barn.  Shit, of course, goes down, and following the rules of Halloween may be the only way to survive.

This film had some great cameos in it, such as The Legendary Hucklebucks playing the Halloween Hootenanny and Ari Lehman of Friday the 13th fame plays the TV/radio personality Dr. Rock.  I also feel like there are some references to other horror classics.  The combination of the skull mask, the witch mask, and Pumpkin Jack made me think of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.  There's also an Evil Dead moment with some vines, and a more modern bit with a vibe of Tucker & Dale VS. Evil.  The only issue I had with this film at all was despite the relatively normal length, it felt like it was dragging a bit in the middle.  I thought this film was closer to two hours until I looked up the time.

If you want to check out more info on The Barn then visit their Facebook at facebook.com/TheBarnmovie/
Also if you want to check out the New Orleans Horror Film Fest you can do so at nolahorrorfilmfest.com/

Overall I give The Barn 4 copies of the Replacements album Hootenanny out of 5:

Day 21: Killennial (2016) NEW ORLEANS HORROR FILM FEST SPECIAL EDITION PART 1 of 2!

I'm taking a break from my traditional routine with Netflix to review two films I ended up catching at the 2016 New Orleans Horror Film Fest this year.  The first of which was the short film entitled Killennial.

A true horror-comedy, Killennial focuses around a killer that puts his cabin up for rent on AirBnB to a group of millennials.  His goal is to scare and murder each of them but they're so focused with their Instagram photos and vlogging that they don't even seem to notice the man in the mask.  If you have a chance to see this film, I definitely recommend it for some good laughs and some relatively decent gore kills.

My only complaint was the overacting of everyone that isn't the killer.  If it were toned down just a bit I feel like it actually would've helped the comedy factor a bit more.

If you'd like to check out info on this film you can go to its Facebook page at facebook.com/killennial/.
You can also check out the New Orleans Horror Film Fest page at nolahorrorfilmfest.com

Overall, I give Killennial 3 this dude in a gas mask out of 5:

Day 20: The Diabolical (2015) 1h 26m

The funny thing about rolling dice to pick what movie I'm going to watch is that sometimes you get something good, and sometimes you come up craps.  After watching the movie I previously reviewed (High Lane) I was hoping to get a decent pallet cleanser.  This time, lady luck was on my side.

The Diabolical focuses on a single mom and her two children.  An entity of some sort randomly appears in their home and causes all kinds of fear and havoc.  One of the kids believes that it might be the spirit of their deceased father.  Over time more and more of the plot unravels including a laboratory that wants to buy/threatens to foreclose on their home and someone close to them is tied in as well.  I'm not going to plot heavy on this one because aside from the sci-fi section at the end, this movie was pretty good.

A lot of the visual effects were great.  The figure that keeps appearing through the house looks frightening as fuck.  There's an early scene where we first see him and there's just a featureless face that he suddenly rips into and tears a film away to show the real face underneath.  It went from "Oh, that guy is rad looking," to "holy fuck!" that fast.  Every time he appears in his grotesque form it's always a good creep out.  My personal favorite being the one involving the dryer.

The "twist" part of the ending you see coming a little bit before the reveal if you know what to look for.  Also, as I said above, the sci-fi tie in element toward the end elicits more of a groan than a gasp.  Overall, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so I do recommend The Diabolical.

I give The Diabolical a solid 3 fake ghost photos out of 5:

Day 19: High Lane (2009) 1h 30m

I had a realization while watching this film.  You know what would make a great horror movie?  To just have these continuous moments of suspense and fear, but then everyone survives.  It would be along the lines of Hitchcock but just no Norman Bates on the other side of the shower curtain.  Just a thought, mainly because I feel like if someone made this idea it would suck.

The French film High Lane started by making me feel like it might just be a sense of survival against shitty odds.  A group of people attempt to go mountain climbing but find the path has been closed.  Being a bunch of idiots they attempt it anyway which leads to a lot of close calls up until they find some weird insane guy, that only screams, on a mountain top.  Anton the insane keeps trying to kill them.  Everyone dies.  I feel no remorse for any of them.

As with a lot of horror films, High Lane seems like they had an idea to start with (the mountain climbing) and reached a point where they realized they couldn't make it into a full film and threw in the insane guy.  I was so disappointed by this film I actually watched another one after it in hopes of it being a pallet cleanser...

I give High Lane 1 mountain climbing clip out of 5:

Day 18: Exit To Hell (2013) 1h 21m

Remember when everyone forgot that grindhouse style films existed until Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez made people remember?  Then everyone promptly shit their pants for the visual style and we had a giant influx of films attempting to be Planet Terror or Death Proof?  Remember that?  The thing that made the original grindhouse films endearing was the fact they were scripts that were probably written in a weekend, low budget, and sometimes poorly acted.  People forget that and in attempting to emulate the nu-grindhouse style end up creating shit.  Exit to Hell actually did a good job of avoiding this.

The hub of this film is the town of Redstone; a lost town in the desert of wherever U.S.A. off highway 69.  It's mostly creepy shirtless redneck people with assorted weapons, a gas station, and a sheriff that drives a car that would make Mad Max jealous.  People making a getaway to Mexico after committing violent crimes seem to end up stuck here where they pay for their deeds.  Hence the tagline "justice is served."

I'm pretty sure that Exit to Hell knew that they weren't going to make something Oscar worthy.  So rather than going toward the professional route they hit the gas and jumped up over the top.  It feels influenced by the nu-grindhouse technique while also pulling from something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Implementing a bizarre cast of characters mixed in with young sexy criminals and throwing in car chases, some four-on-the-floor rock n' roll, gore, and cannibalism make this movie worth a watch.

I give Exit to Hell 3 coming attraction screens out of 5:

Day 17: Curve (2015) 1h 21m

I like to research and learn about things.  The down side to this is that sometimes you find out things that are kind of disappointing.  For starters, 2015's Curve shows no box office return, which means this went straight to DVD.  Digging even further (possibly digging my own grave) I found out that this movie was green lit in 2007, and during that time had two previous leads cast.  What happened to them?  No clue, but it took eight years for this to come out... it probably should've stayed locked up somewhere.

The Curve really comes across as two films in one.  Our main character is in the process of moving to be with her fiancé and has some car trouble.  A sexy hitchhiker shows up and fixes her car so she offers him a ride.  It seems like she's gonna hook up with him and starts to drive to a motel when he starts saying gross stuff about his huge dick.  It ends up he's a scumbag creeper and is going to kidnap and possibly sexually assault her.  In an attempt at survival the girl drives her SUV straight through a curve and off a cliff.  She gets trapped and he ends up taunting her on and off during days of her being stuck.  Apparently when he isn't there he's been at a cabin murdering and torturing some family.

I think that this film probably had the main plot of her being trapped in the car but they weren't sure how to make it work.  Enter the creeper.  Overall I wish he wasn't in it.  His scenes pretty much ruined the movie.  Not that this movie was great to begin with.  There are also a lot of leaps of logic.  The only part I got really excited for was when she woke up to a bunch of rats in the car and I was hoping she'd start singing and it'd be like some fucked up Cinderella type deal where they would free her and kill the scumbag.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

I give Curve 1 curves ahead road sign out of 5:

Day 16: Spiders/ Spiders 3D (2013) 1h 29m

I recently completed a playthrough of the 2016 version of Doom.  Being a fan of the original two (and kind of liking the 3rd... kind of) I knew exactly what I was expecting.  Imps, Pinkys, all sorts of hell demons.  You know how it works.  So why am I bringing up a video game on my horror film blog?  It's because as I approached the final level I knew exactly what boss I'd be facing: The Spider Mastermind!  A giant cyber demon spider monster that was brought to mind by the "queen" spider in this film.

Also, yes, I know.  Spiders don't have queens.

Spiders (or Spiders 3D if you watch that shit in the third dimension) is one of those horror movies that seems like it wants to be a good film, but if it embraced the cheese factor of it then it could be amazing.  Our plot runs as thus: the former U.S.S.R. had a space station with these creatures that just happen to look like spiders on it.  A part of the space station crashes from space and into the NY subway.  Eventually the military is brought in as well as a Russian scientist that was working on the project and they begin collecting the spiders to continue with the original plan.  We're stuck with an upper level subway security person and his ex-wife/current public health doctor/scientist/Shannon Dorhety impersonator.  So space spiders escape, and giant queen spider attacks the city... etc. etc.

There were shots in this film that reminded me of Them! or The Giant Gila Monster and I wish that they would have gone down that road.  Like I said above, as a cheesy movie this would've been great and adding a camp factor on purpose would make it fun.  They didn't though, and instead blew an estimated $7 million on trying to make a polished turd.

I give Spiders/Spiders 3D 2 Queen Elizabeth I paintings out of 5:

Day 15: The Abandoned (2015) 1h 26m

When you're movie production company is named C Plus Pictures I know you're not bringing your A game.

You know what?  I sat here for about 20 minutes trying to write this next paragraph, but it's not happening.  This film was okay but pulled too many horror tropes: jump scares, ghosts of children, shady old state hospital practices, and the "shocker" of a St. Elsewhere style ending.  The more that got revealed the more my interest waned.  Writing this review about the damn thing couldn't even keep my interest.

I give The Abandoned 1 sad Yoshi out of 5:

Day 14: Para Elisa (2012) 1h 15m

Have you ever heard the Patton Oswalt bit about his TiVO?  I feel that way with some of the movies Netflix puts in their horror listing when I'm counting to the number I rolled.  It seems that since I enjoyed some of the foreign horror films I've watched on this blog that Netflix has the idea that I must like all foreign horror.  "But you like the horsee shows! NO TiVO! BAD TiVO!"  Bad Netflix!

Para Elisa comes to us from Spain and revolves around a spoiled shit of a college girl whose mom won't lend her 1000 Euros for a trip with her friends because the mother had just paid for her to take a trip to London.  Her drug dealer boyfriend sees a poster for a babysitting job, calls the number, and hands her the phone.  She eventually goes to find out that the girl she is supposed to baby sit is a grown ass woman that the mother has completely fucked up in the head.  After being drugged, our leading lady wakes up to realize that she is not meant to babysit, but to become a living doll for the daughter to play house with.

This movie wasn't for a horror fan.  This is more for the vanilla movie watcher that wanted to watch something scary.  Yes, the premise is kind of fucked up and the mother/daughter relationship is bizarre but it really didn't keep me invested in the film.  In addition, a leading character that I instantly did not like (as obvious above) really gave me no one to root for.  Plus, you see the ending coming way to early.  I know that's a constant complaint I bring up on here, but I want to be surprised.  Just once.

I give Para Elisa 1 creepy doll out of 5:

Day 13: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) 2h 3m

What happened?  Where was I?  I watched this film while I was home sick from work and it sent me into an over-analytical spiral where I tried to really understand certain scenes in this movie.  That's partially true.  The other part is I had a lazy/busy period where if I wasn't doing something I wasn't going to do something.  Sorry, shit happens... or doesn't.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus isn't a horror film.  It was under the list of horror films in Netflix which is how I ended up rolling it, but this movie is much more of a drama with a supernatural element.  Written and directed by Spike Lee, and based off of the 1973 film Ganja & Hess, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus follows Hess, a researcher of African cultures, studying a ritual blade of the Ashanti people.  After his assistant has a psychotic episode and stabs him with an artifact, Hess comes back from the dead and has a need for blood as his primary sustenance.  Hess isn't quite a vampire in the traditional sense, but represents more of an evolution or mutation of man based on the esoteric practices of the Ashanti (as stated early in the film).

There are some plot points that I found really well done in this film.  For one, if blood has been tainted by alcohol or disease then it can't be ingested.  When Hess does one of his first kills it is with a woman he picked up in a club.  After he vomits from her blood he finds HIV medication in her purse.  Panic sets in and the next set of scenes is Hess at a clinic getting a tested.  Aside from the blood drinking, the rest of the scene felt very real.  This is part of my over analyzing of this film, but I wonder if this was meant to almost be a warning of the very real threat of HIV/STD's.  The scene ends with the nurse telling Hess to wear a condom, to which he says he will, but as the screen goes black we just hear the nurse say something to the extent of "yeah, they always say that."

My only criticism is there were a few scenes I wasn't quite sure what the purpose was.  A lengthy lesbian seduction and sex scene happens and it felt out of place.  That's my only real complaint.

Since this wasn't really a horror movie, I don't feel like I can give it a regular rating on here.  If I were going to give it one the I would give it a two out of five overall.

Day 12: 12 Days of Terror (2004) 1h 26m

You know what was an awesome and under appreciated TV show?  Sliders.  It was one of Jerry O'Connell's great TV works before his acting career took off (aside from My Secret Identity, and not counting Stand By Me).  He isn't in this movie, but John Rhys-Davies who played Arturo is in it!

Speaking of TV, 2004's 12 Days of Terror was a made for TV movie about a shark attack on the Jersey Shore in 1916.  Think of it as old-timey Jaws with less of a budget... and a worse script... and some take-it-or-leave-it acting.  I'm personally to the point where I wish I could go back in time to see how people acted in certain time periods.  This film made everything seem so forced to be from 1916.

There wasn't even 12 solid days of terror, I think there were two shark attacks and then 12 days later some other ones.  This movie also pushes the idea that it was a baby great white that did the attacks but apparently the real shark or sharks were never identified.

This film did have one great scene though which I felt exemplified America, even to this day.  There was a shark attack in a creek (or "crick" as Rhys-Davies keeps yelling) and men and women just lined the edge of the creek firing guns into the water.  There wasn't even a sign of the shark there, they were just shooting guns into the water.

Someone on IMDB reviewed this movie and said that it should be Oscar worthy.  I feel more like it's bad, but not even bad enough for a Razzie.  That makes it the worst kind of movie.  Where you can't have fun with it, but you can't enjoy it either.

I give 12 Days of Terror 1 squeaky shark out of 5:

Day 11: Kill Zombie! (2012) 1h 30m

Don't be distracted by the hand throwing up the Dio horns on the poster.  I feel like there should be another hand next to it making an asterisk.  I don't know how, but it is that other hand's responsibility to figure it out!  People need to know that this movie isn't as rock n' roll as they hope.

Kill Zombie! comes to us from the Netherlands.  It's mostly with subtitles except for the Russian (which might have just been Russian sounding gibberish) and the few sentences in English.  While I'm mentioning the English, words like "zombie," "bitch," and "fuck/motherfucker," haven't been translated to Dutch.  So a lot of the time when you know they're saying something else, the subtitles were something entirely different.  Also, as a native English speaker (although my writing may not always reflect that) I'm kind of disappointed that the use of "bitch" as a negative term for another person has been adopted by other languages.  'Tis a dark day for our vernacular history...

Back to the matter at hand,  Kill Zombie! is a poor man's combination of Shaun of the Dead with a bit of Scott Pilgrim.  A few survivors attempt to survive with a bunch of meh jokes.  One of them wants to go save his "girlfriend" and on the way zombie hijinks ensue.  Suddenly, vampires!  The end.

There wasn't much substance here and it's hard to be a zombie horror comedy with something like Shaun of the Dead having done it so well.

I give Kill Zombie! 2 bowling ball hands out of 5:

Day 10: Dementia (2015) 1h 30m

I have a little game I play with myself anytime I watch a horror movie.  It's "can I figure out who the bad guy is before the reveal?"  The problem with playing that while watching Dementia is that you find out that everyone is absolute trash in this film!

The premise is simple: a Vietnam War vet suffers a stroke and that begins the onset of dementia.  His son and granddaughter come to help him get set-up with a live-in nurse.  The live-in nurse is someone out for revenge on the Vietnam War vet.

So here's a rundown on why everyone is trash:

War vet - he was in a P.O.W. camp and tortured because a member of his platoon gave them up.  He was angry the wife of that man was granted her husband's purple heart upon death so he possibly sexually assaulted but definitely killed her.  Her daughter saw him from a hiding place.  He was also one of those drunk and abusive husbands after returning from the war.

"Nurse" - Not a real nurse, the daughter of the mother and traitor soldier, dedicated her life to finding this guy and getting revenge.  Also killed the vet's cat and blamed it on him.  He should've extracted revenge on her for the death of his cat there and saved us the rest of the film..

granddaughter - stealing from her grandfather's house but also realizes the nurse isn't what she seems.

son - doesn't trust his dad because of the father's past abusive actions.  Seems to just want to push him off on someone else so he doesn't have to deal with him.  Lots of unresolved anger and resentment issues with his father.

This wasn't anything new at its core.  This was the first film in this run that I've definitely considered shutting it off and chalking it up as crap.  I let it go as if it would maybe get better, and it definitely didn't.

I give Dementia 0 trash bags out of 5:

Day 9: The Fog (2005) 1h 40m

John Carpenter has made some great films.  Unfortunately I never saw the original of this film so I can't comment on his version, but I'll assume it was probably good.  This remake I have renamed The Fart.

Quick sum up: Town founders were dick bags, plundered and murdered a ship full of people, then covered it up.  Now it's the present day and people are celebrating the founding of the town, but the ghosts of those on the ship come for revenge! In the form of a giant fart cloud!

Seriously, don't make your "fog" have a green tinge a bunch of the time.  Also, you go crazy on the CGI fog effect but use an overly obvious fog machine in other parts, and it looks like shit.  The ghosts were kind of cool looking, some of the deaths were cool, but I spent more time making fun of this film than taking it seriously.  Honestly, it was kind of hard to when they have the flashback at the beginning end with Fallout Boy's Sugar We're Goin' Down blasting as the transition.

As a personal annoyance (and because this is my blog) don't use the first chorus of a song and then have your DJ start talking right after it.  I heard what you did there!  I know where you live!

This remake might have been good for 2005, but in 2016 I found it to be more of a high school kid type movie more than anything.  You know, where a group of kids go and make fun of it, or where a couple go on a date and make out through most of it because the film wasn't interesting.  That's how babies are made, kids!  Teenage necking during boring film remakes!  BABIES!

I give The Fog 1 Shutterstock fart cloud out of 5:

Day 8: Convergence (2015) 1h 40m

I feel like Convergence was Netflix letting me know not to let my guard down.  I made my mistake yesterday with Baskin and assuming it wasn't going to be good, but it showed me wrong.  For Convergence I thought it was starting out really well and then it just suddenly shit the bed for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good crazy God-cult bad guy and realms existing between the worlds.  My issue comes when they felt the need to take what has been a really good concept with the movie and suddenly introduce the "real world" and do so with ghost hunters.  It's such a fuck you to the whole battle between "good" and "perceived good" that exists in this purgatory realm.  It cheapened it for me.

I had a much longer review for this film all typed up and ready to go but I deleted it to write this.  Why?  Because this film doesn't deserve any form of recap.  You don't need to describe a turd to someone to get the picture.  We all know a piece of shit when we see it.

I give Convergence 2 abandoned hospitals out of 5:

Day 7: Baskin (2015) 1h 37m

There are times in life where you will make horrible mistakes.  While not my worst mistake, writing this film off early was certainly a lack in judgement on my part.  What started off as a slow crawl turned into one of the most insane things I've ever watched.  It's the kind of horror that is in line with the Silent Hill video games where things are so grotesque and twisted you're not sure exactly what you're looking at.

Based off of the short film bearing the same title, the Turkish film Baskin (which translates to "police raid") focuses on what becomes the most surreal night for a group of police officers.  After acting more like a biker gang than cops at a late night restaurant, they receive a call for back-up at a location not far from them.  Along the way a series of strange occurrences happen, such as seeing a naked man run past and something unseen hitting their van and leaving symbols scratched in it.  Then their van hits a bloody man in the road and veers into a deep creek.

This is where we have the first of many dream realm scenes between the rookie and the "boss" of the officers.  We also find that they both see a cloaked man just beyond the door of the room these scenes exist in.  The rookie is pulled from the water and we briefly meet a group of Romani that give them directions to the site they were called to.  This is the point where things began to descend into madness and I became hyper focused on Baskin.

They arrive at a large building to find a single cop inside hitting his head off of a wall.  After he points to a door our cops decide to split up.  Then they enter Hell.  Literally.  As soon as I finished this film I begin extensively looking things up on it.  They don't enter a Dante's Inferno hell, or a fire and brimstone hell, but rather a cultish human-extremes version of hell.  It's an overly sexualized, bloody, grotesque, absolutely insane portrayal of hell.  To top it all off, their leader was this guy:

Mehmet Cerrahoglu

That is not make-up, he has a rare condition.  All they did was slowly add tattoos to his body as time passed.  This is also the only film he has ever been in and he was fucking amazing!  His voice and delivery and his actions kept me rapt on the entire ending of this film.  You are the fuckin' man, Mr. Cerrahoglu!

Watch this movie.  Trust me, it'll be slow to start but when it gets going it really gets going.  I didn't even go into the full details of the insanity because you need to experience it.  When my fiancé and I woke up this morning I instantly started rattling on about the craziness of this film.  Most people just wake up with a kiss and then shower, I gush about satanic cults.

I give Baskin 4 hellmouths out of 5:

photo of Mehmet Cerrahoglu from twitter.com/ellifdagg

Day 6: Splatter (2009) 29m

I feel like Netflix was fucking with me on this one.  When I saw a 29 minute running time and Corey Feldman's face I assumed this was some sort of short film.  Nothing against Mr. Feldman, as he has been in many movies I like, but he hasn't been horror relevant since the first Lost Boys film (and this includes the late addition sequels they made where he did a reprise of his Edgar Frog role).

Splatter was a web series created for Netflix.  It was meant to be an interactive show where the next person killed would be chosen by the viewers.  I assume that what I watched was either the pilot or maybe the first episode as almost everyone was killed during it.

It starts with Corey Feldman's character Johnny Splatter committing suicide on camera after spouting a fake vodou spell.  Five people from his career then show up for his wake (I'm not sure what it is, maybe a shitty funeral at night).  These people are his two former band mates, his manager, his producer, and a groupie.  The whole thing is filmed at what I'm pretty sure was the castle house from a season of Flavor of Love.  A video of the suicide shows up but then runs in reverse to where Corey Feldman is telling them his will.

I don't get the video segments.  We see Corey in person and he's a zombie but on the videos he's normal and the videos correspond in relation to events and deaths that happen just seconds before.  So I have no clue what the time logic is here or if he just had his revenge planned this tightly.

After the first death our cast finds a journal in the empty coffin.  It's written entirely in a different language, but don't worry!  The groupie spent time in an African country and she "picks up dialects quickly," so she can read it.  Yes, the logic is that she can pick up spoken languages quickly and can therefore read this journal.  Fuck this character.  She should have died first... preferably on the way to the wake/funeral.

The journal contains a ritual to stop Johnny; body parts from those murdered, collected and burned while an incantation is done.  Come the end there is only one person still alive is, Johnny's manager.  Bee tee dubbs, his fucking manager is CANDYMAN!  Of course not in the role of Candyman, but still the same actor.  He starts the ritual but rather than finishing it he and Johnny make a deal to do a comeback tour.  As a fuckin' nasty zombie, Johnny Splatter reunion tour.  Also Johnny brings his murdered bassist back to life because he needs a bassist.

You know, I kind of thought this was goofy fun when I watched it, but recounting this pilot (or whatever) has made me kind of angry at it.  Also, there were no other episodes of it on Netflix which is what confused me to begin with.  IMDB says there were 10 episodes but apparently only three aired.  They probably got pissed like me after telling someone about it and realized it wasn't as good as they initially thought.

I give Splatter 2 sweet Frog Brothers shirt designs out of 5: