Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies (2014) 1h 28m

I've had this sitting on my shelf since Christmas when a family member bought it from a list of DVDs I gave them.  Utterly confused on their part, they just seemed happy to get me something that I was excited for.  I knew the gist of this film from Wrestling With Wregret's review but by now I've forgotten everything and it became a good time to revisit it.

Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies sums up most of the premise in its title.  In true Shane Douglas form, he's a dick and kills a man in the ring with a tombstone pile driver all because Shane caught his woman having the fakest sex ever with the now murdered wrestler.  The brother of the corpse approaches the promoter and says that he wants a private show at an abandoned West Virginia penitentiary with Shane as the main person.  The promoter also offers up Matt Hardy, Kurt Angle, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Reby Sky for no reason other than he was just handed about $3000.  The building is full of zombies and once inside everyone has to try and fight their way out... all because Shane Douglas is a dick.

Why am I not in this film?

Aside from the wrestlers fighting zombies and Shane Douglas being a shit bag, the remaining plot of this film gets muddy.  The living brother eats human hearts to gain power to create and control the zombies but he gets that power from some person or demon.  I'm not sure.  All I know is that if you're getting a bunch of wrestlers together for a film then your demon bad guy needs to be fucking James Mitchell!  That dude is probably Beelzebub for real.  Although, Kevin Sullivan makes an appearance at the beginning so I guess that hits some sort of Satan quota.

BFFs 5-Ever ('cause it's one more than 4)

Piper isn't quite up to his They Live level, but he stands out the most.  Matt Hardy and his then girlfriend/now wife Reby Sky literally exist just to have awkward teenage "my parents are downstairs" sexual encounters.  Hacksaw is Hacksaw.  I can't talk shit on him because I met him and he was one of the nicest dudes I ever talked to.

Overall this film is a mass of awkward pacing and clearance Halloween City zombie make-up.  Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies is really only for fans of wrestling and super low budget movie making, but there are some inside jabs such as Shane Douglas saying "Your checks aren't going to bounce like Paul Heymen's..." which you have to know about the business to get.  Also, low fuckin' blow, Shane.

I give Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies 1 ECW Extreme Music CD out of 5:

Hungerford (2014) 1h 19m

I don't know about you, but if I were an alien planning some sort of invasion I don't think that I would start in a small UK town.  The idea of starting low key in a suburb is good; less people to notice, easy to take over an area quickly, etc.  I just don't feel like picking somewhere on a large island would work out well in the long run.  Unless it was Australia and then you learned to weaponize the hellscape of fauna that exist there.  You know, this is all if I were planning an alien invasion...

Hungerford is set in the UK, where a film student decides to film every aspect of his life for an entire week.  It just so happens that this week is the one where a parasitic alien race decided to start invading the Earth via his small town.  Armed with cans of deodorant, an axe, and a camera, our film student and his flat mates all set out to secure a love interest while attempting to fend off these alien brain slugs.

This movie felt like it was a really long trailer for a video game.  The ending came and I felt like I needed to pick up my PS4 controller to help them fight off the invading hoard.  With that in mind, Hungerford does toe that Shaun of the Dead line.  It just lacks the humor and charm that Shaun has.  I think they realized this too during filming because there is a mention of Shaun of the Dead by name.

Hungerford is a bit slow and we're given a lot of shaky cam footage which gives us zero visual content.  Otherwise, Hungerford is pretty solid.  By the end, it satisfied me enough to be pleased but left me open to wanting more.  I doubt that sequel will ever come, but I'll throw in a few bucks to a Kickstarter or whatever if they announce it.

I do want to address that this movie sent me down a huge personal research spiral because I couldn't remember what movie, TV show, book, comic, or video game had a similar type of alien.  Something that was invisible until the connection was broken, slug-like, and controlled the host through the back of the neck.  The closest I found was 1994's The Puppet Masters but that's not what I'm thinking of.  For some reason I keep thinking it might be in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that feels wrong too.  So if anyone knows what I might be thinking of (as that's not vague at all) please hit me up on Twitter @30daysofplight or e-mail me at 30daysofplight@gmail.com because it's driving me insane!

I give Hungerford 3 Eldritch Parasite MTG cards out of 5:

The Babadook (2014) 1h 33m

This is my second time watching The Babadook.  I saw it not long after it came out and didn't understand what all the fuss was about.  So when it came up for this website I realized that I needed to check my shit at the door and give this film an honest chance to see if maybe, four years later, this film had something that I missed.  Don't get me wrong, I missed or forgot about a lot, but do I still think this film is a Babadookie?

The Babadook is a visual representation of anxiety and depression.  Everyone knows this by now.  A single mother and her six-year-old son are going through some hard times and a book titled The Babadook mysteriously ends up on their shelf.  It freaks them both the fuck out and from that moment the boy begins to claim that certain things are the Babadook's fault or that he is physically there.  The one thing he keeps telling his mother though is to not let him in... she shits the bed on that one.

A lot of the conversations I've had about this film have people pointing a finger at the boy and basically saying "that kid is a shit," or blaming him in part for his mother's problems.  Okay, first off, that kid is on the cusp of turning seven and built a backpack catapult and a crossbow out of random pieces of wood and string.  That's some incredibly intelligent shit for someone that age.  Other than that, he's just a typical child.  He hasn't developed proper tact, he is curious about all kinds of things, and if you don't pay attention then he may get into some shit.  On top of that, he realizes that there is something really wrong with his mother emotionally and attempts to comfort her and let her know that he won't leave her.

They're both dealing with the absence of his father (he died in a car accident while driving the mother to deliver the boy).  It just happens that as the birthday approaches it reminds her of what her life was meant to be (a writer), and what it became instead.  She also doesn't have a network of supportive individuals as her sister sucks and she hides the truth from her neighbor and coworker.  Her depression is so deep that she can't sleep, calls off work, ignores her child, and becomes a miserable person overall.  It's only once she realizes that she needs to get help and, for lack off a better metaphor in this film, stands up to her depression (The Babadook) does she begin to heal.

The Babadook is banished to the basement (where the father's stuff all remains) and she acknowledges it, feeds it worms, but doesn't let it rule her life anymore.  She's become a greater mother, neighbor, and person.  If only dealing with depression were as easy as yelling "THIS IS MY HOUSE!" and then giving your depression worms every so often...

This has been more of an analysis than a review.  I still don't really like The Babadook.  I think it's okay but I've touched on my dislike of "the real monster is mental illness!!!!" enough on this site.  The movie itself is just paced too slow and it felt like a slog, especially when I knew what the payoff was going to be.

I give The Babadook 1 Babadook Meme out of 5:

6-5=2 (2014)

Three days deep and we get our first "found footage" film of this Cut.  I wanted to rip into this movie right at the start of this review but I decided to take a moment and look into it a bit more.  This is really a bare bones production done on a shoe-string budget.  It's the director/producer's first film and there wasn't much of a crew.  I'm filling you in on this info because it's something that I'm taking into consideration.  I came into myself thanks in part to a very DIY punk scene in Pittsburgh, so I can respect this kind of lo-fi production.

6-5=2 is a film out of India where a group of friends go hiking on a random mountain path.  I'm having trouble remembering what their actual motivation is for this because I've had a lot of Indian found footage films I've ended up watching for this blog.  This movie turns into a bootleg version of the Blair Witch quickly (a film which was said to be the major influence) with faux graves appearing in the night, cameras catching weird behavior, and everyone being lost.

This isn't the best horror film I've ever seen, but it's also not the worst.  The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity influence is far too heavy and feels more like copying than just an homage.  This is especially prevalent when they use an alternate Paranormal Activity ending where the remaining female walks up to the camera and cuts her throat in front of it.  The parts I liked were really more of things that maybe only I would enjoy.  For example, during one of the evenings a girl sits up and starts doing some sick thrash metal hair spins for about a minute.  I was waiting for some DRI or Municipal Waste to kick in, but it didn't.  The other thing I liked was a brief ghost appearance that lead to my note of "Oh shit! Special appearance by the Babadook!"  So as I said, only dumb stuff that got me excited.  As for the rest, they made a movie with what they had.  That's more than I can say for a lot of us.

I give 6-5=2 1 Suicidal Tendencies album out of 5:

Strayed (a.k.a. Perdidos) (2014) 1h 33m

So close.  So close to finishing this Cut without having to deal with another "found footage" film and instead one more has to sneak in at the zero hour.  My husband and I had a long discussion last night about this subgenre of horror and what has and hasn't worked.  Blair Witch played on the fact that everyone grew up with some sort of urban legend.  Paranormal Activity brought the fright into our homes.  Grave Encounters took the phenomena of ghost hunting shows and had their own twist on the absurdity of them as well as pushing horror to be a bit more extreme.  Most generic found footage just keep taking a group of 20-somethings and putting them in a haunted space.  You know what else had that plot?  Scooby Doo!  And the fucking Scooby gang is way more entertaining!

Strayed (Perdidos) does this same dead horse style plot.  A group of 20-somethings go into a supposedly haunted building to record ghosts.  They vanish and this is the footage found.  The twist here is that we know a Rabbi had to do an exorcism in this building.  The Rabbi also left a Dybbuk just chillin' in that space, which I feel you wouldn't want to leave hanging out for just anyone to find.  Spooky scares happen and I can't read Hebrew to save my life so I have no idea what half of that stuff says.  I couldn't even translate whats on that poster and I spent a good 20 minutes trying and just gave up assuming its one of the 72 names of god.

Surprisingly, Strayed was one of the better found footage films I've watched.  The quick pans gliding by shadowy figures are decently scary but what this movie does that I really like is that the spirit has the ability to manipulate physical space.  People find themselves in hallways that end up looping themselves, rooms will change at any point, and impossible space becomes possible.  In the end though, these weren't enough to save the film from long periods of nothing and poor character interactions.  I would have liked this better if it were a 20-30 minute short film.  This way you get all killer/no filler.

I give Strayed (Perdidos) 1 rabbi clip art out of 5:

The Canal (2014) 1h 32m

Ireland.  All I really know about it, from the top of my head, is the following:  A history of strong political discord and activism, potatoes, the WWE wrestler Sheamus, and the stereotype of Boston police being Irish.  I'm sure there's more but right now I'm too lazy to attempt to recall additional info.  Why am I even rambling about Ireland right now?  It's because today's film comes from the Emerald Isles!

The Canal focuses on a family of three, at least until they become a family of two.  The husband, in the course of his archivist work, finds that their home has a history of strange murders in it.  In his paranoid husband work he finds his wife having an affair.  After stumbling into a toilet that makes Trainspotting blush, he sees a strange man attack his cheating wife.  Unable to save her, or stay conscious, he comes to and calls the police.  The cops assume it's him, he begins to think it's the ghost of a man that haunts his house, and his sanity seems to dangle from a thread.  Was it ghosts?  Was it his own cracking mental state?  Was it a ghost that flew up his ass and used him like a murder puppet?  This is where I would make a "C-anal" joke but I'm trying to avoid it.

 There's the old adage of "children should be seen and not heard," and when it comes to celluloid there are definitely some kids that I feel should not have been given the opportunity to be on film.  I bring this up because the child in The Canal has perfected his mumble-core acting at such a young age that it ruined scenes for me.  I didn't even have an issue with his accent, just his annunciation of words.  Plus he's one of those kids that his acting just doesn't seem to fit the emotion of the moment.  I feel bad for talking shit on him though because he's young so there's a lot of room for improvement over time.  Hang in there kid!

One thing that I did love about this film was the very ending of it.  I mention time and time again on here when a movie tips its hand and I see the ending coming early but the very end of this film caught me by surprised and I got super hyped on it.  Honestly.  It went down and I yelled "OOOOOOOO RAD!" at the TV, and then the movie was over.  This isn't the kind of film though where I could just tell you to watch the ending though because the whole is greater than some of its parts.  I'm not saying this is a perfect film, it reminded me a bit too much of the first season of American Horror Story, but I'm not going to write this one off.

I give The Canal 2.5 flags of Ireland out of 5:

Secret of Evil (a.k.a. Secreto Matusita) (2014) 1h 17m

 

Alright, I either pissed in Netflix's corn flakes, or I pissed in my die's corn flakes.  The third option is that neither of those like corn flakes with their piss.  Whatever the case may be, I have my second "found footage" film for the week.  Get ready for some shit.

Secret of Evil (Secreto Matusita) takes place in a haunted house where we get two possible back stories only to find that the cause is a totally different story.  We start by interviewing a man in a mental hospital where he mentions the "owner" while he trashes the room.  Then we get our two stories.  One is about a Japanese family living there and the other being about a couple living upstairs, all of which end with murder.  Our Scooby crew eventually find a letter hidden in a wall with a dead baby and that gives us the true story.  It doesn't change the fact they all die and the ghosts eat their bodies or shove them up their ghost butts or something. If I had, to then I can sum this up as  pretty much the Blair Witch Project only they have a clairvoyant with them and much better tech... and bodies shoved up ghost butts.

I don't know how to talk about found footage movies anymore.  It's mostly a bunch of "what was that?" and "Ahhhhh I'm going crazy with all these ghosts up in here!"  The one thing Secret of Evil has going for it would be that it mainly uses practical effects and camera pans for the spooky elements.  As I mentioned above, this felt too much like Blair Witch to really be a wholly original idea.

I give Secret of Evil 1 El Terrible picture out of 5:

Honeymoon (2014) 1h 27m

Don't confuse this with Honeymoon (a.k.a Luna de miel) that I talked about on Rank & Vile last month.  This is the other movie named Honeymoon, or one of the maybe dozen films named Honeymoon.  I just have access to these two.  Truthfully, I got the better end of the deal with this film as opposed to what I subjected Quincy and Ryan to.

Honeymoon takes us to a lakeside cabin in the woods.  Just married, and looking to get away from the city, Bea and Paul plan to spend their honeymoon swimming in a lake and having tons of sex.  It's too cold to swim but Paul is apparently ready to go all the damn time.  Our couple has a strange encounter with a childhood friend of Bea's and the friend's wife warning our duet to get away from the area.  That evening Paul wakes to find a naked and sleepwalking Bea somewhere in the woods.  Bea's behavior becomes strange, Paul becomes paranoid, and this honeymoon has become a horror moon!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  That's a terrible joke, I'm sorry.

 This film tries hard to pull an ace out of its sleeve, but in the process of doing so it fucks up and shows its hand too early.  I was taken in by the plot and the development of Bea's changes but as we get information everything starts to point toward one explanation.  I'm not gonna say it's aliens, but it's aliens.  I was hoping for some sort of lycanthrope or cryptozoological creature, but I got gross things I can only describe as cervical huggers.  Pretty much the whole third act of this film is a let down, or a beam down... am I right?  I'm not, I'm sorry again.

I give Honeymoon 2 Ancient Alien memes out of 5:

The Midnight After (2014) 2h 4m

It's been a while since we've had any C-Horror on this blog.  Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've had any horror from Japan, Korea, or China.  I guess it's just how the dice roll sometimes when it comes to these reviews.

Imagine boarding a full mini-bus and while en route to your destination all signs of humanity vanish.  This is the plot of The Midnight After.  While passing through a tunnel there is a moment where everyone on the bus blinks at the same time and suddenly cars and people everywhere disappear.  In addition to this mystery, some of remainders that still exist begin to die in strange ways, such as their body parts just turning to dust.  Theories come from every angle among those that still live.

This film had a lot going on.  My issue is that some of it didn't seem to go anywhere, leaving me with a lot of questions.  There's a whole section revolving around David Bowie's Space Oddity which leads to a thin thread of something else but the source is never discovered.  The existence of Japanese men in gas masks gets discussed but we don't get a concrete reason as to why they have a presence in Hong Kong.  There's a strange time loss/memory loss section introduced with one of the characters too that is quickly forgotten.

The Midnight After also contains a rape scene which turns into a necro-rape scene after the woman succumbs to whatever is killing people.  This later outs one of the survivors as a scumbag.  I'm pretty sure this whole scene is meant to have a "Lord of the Flies" twinge insomuch as morality and punishment is defined by those alive.

Aside from the confusion and sexual assault scene, The Midnight After was okay.  They did a great job of making you invested with each of the survivors by the end of the film.  The characters were diverse enough to keep each of their dialog interesting and the light comedic elements did break things up.  I will say the character of Fat got on my nerves since he was the defacto leader by sheer jerkitude.

I give The Midnight After 2 Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie's out of 5:

Last Shift (2014) 1h 30m

If your first shift at a new job is guarding a building that after that night they're not going to use anymore then that shit is haunted.  There is no doubt in my mind that it's haunted.  There's no doubt in the ghost's mind that it's haunted.

Last Shift is set in an old police station where Officer Laren is starting her first shift.  All she has to do is watch the building and at some point a clean-up crew is coming through to get some stuff from the evidence room.  What starts where her hearing some strange noises turns into a full-fledged haunting from the spirits of cult members.

I really got into this film.  It reminded me a lot of the Silent Hill video games because there were seemingly two worlds. Officer Laren would blink or turn away and her surroundings would change in that moment.  It made me feel like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, but turn and it's gone.  Last Shift also had some of the most frightening foley I've heard this side of J-Horror.  I haven't cringed from a horror movie in a while but this one made my shoulders tighten up.

My only complaint is that this film was done in 2014 and Officer Laren still had a flip phone.  Honestly, get with the fucking times girl!  No wonder ghosts are calling you, that's like have a Victrola strapped to your hip for your music!

I give Last Shift 3 police shields out of 5:

Backcountry (2014) 1h 32m

This was almost it.  This was almost the "shit sandwich" review, but I watched the whole thing.  I can't believe I watched the whole thing...

Backcountry is a couple getting lost in the woods and then attacked by a bear.  It didn't have any real sense of survival.  It didn't draw me in to make me care about the characters.  The camera work was a mix of static, shoulder mounted shaky cam, and a few Go Pros which just made it a mess of trash.

If anything, Backcountry should serve as a warning on how not to hike trails and camp.  I'm not an avid woodsman but I enjoy camping and getting out of the city.  I was a Boy Scout in my teens.  A lot of this could have been avoided by simple back packing 101.  Did you need fancy potatoes to eat?  No.  Did you need a fucking map?  YES!

I give Backcountry 0 bear warning signs out of 5:

Kristy (2014) 1h 26m

If modern horror movies have taught me anything, it's that the internet was created by the devil to do the devil's work.  This blog: the devil's, Netflix: the devil's, ordering pizza online: absolutely the devil!  With all this fiber optic satanism running rampant, it's obvious that fake 4Chan cults would pop up, right?

That's kind of the baseline of Kristy.  An online forum known as "/the fold/" hunts down "Kristys."  The women aren't actually named Kristy (well, some might be) but it's a general name used for a girl who has her shit together and is attractive.  They refer to them as "Kristy" by saying that it means "child of Christ" (or something along those lines) and that by killing them they are killing god.  Whatever, it's a cult created on the internet.  The point is this cult has sects around the U.S. and they do these murders while filming on their cell phone cameras and upload them to the site.  Cell phones are the super devil, who is stronger than the regular devil!!

One group decides to go after this girl Justine who is staying on her campus over Thanksgiving because she's an idiot and is taking college too seriously.  This cult sect of a woman in a hood and three guys with shitty duct tape/tin foil masks begin fucking shit up on the like three people that are still working on the campus, a dog, and try to wreck Justine.

This film wasn't really anything new as far as a slasher/survival horror film.  The internet thing made me think of the show Dark Net (which if you haven't seen, check that shit out).  I do like that Justine isn't just the typical "run up the stairs instead of out the front door" type of heroine.  There are a lot of times she outsmarts the killers and a few times she impressed with her survival skills.  There was a brief moment too where her boyfriend shows up and I was worried this film was going to take the "straight white male savior" route, but he exists to get killed and be the spark that ignites the real survival fire in Justine.

Survival Fire kind of sounds like a sweet band name...

I give Kristy 2 pilgrim turkeys out of 5:

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Day 7: Late Phases (2014) 1h 35m

That poster is a fucking lie!  Look at it!  Seriously, take a moment to look at that poster.  So with that name and that image you assume you're looking at a werewolf movie, and you'd be right.  However, that wolf looks a billion times better than what we get.  I'm getting ahead of myself though...

Late Phases holds a double meaning here.  It's not just a reference to the moon, but also to our main character.  He's a Vietnam vet that is being moved into a retirement community.  The kicker here is that he is blind.  This doesn't hold him back though as he is incredibly independent and his military training allowed him to adapt his other senses so he's kind of a badass.

On his first night his neighbor is killed by a werewolf who then tries to kill him and his guide dog.  The guide dog doesn't make it so fuck this werewolf in his wolf ass for mortally wounding the dog.  From there our protagonist pieces things together to realize it's a werewolf and who the werewolf is.  Training and hijinx ensue.

I very rarely look at other reviews of films after I watch them/before I blog about them.  This time though I came across someone comparing this to Bubba Ho-Tep and I had the same feeling early on.  The main differences would be that Bubba Ho-Tep has Bruce Campbell and it is a much better film.

I liked the plot here, but not the execution.  I'm not going to fault the actors or the director (as this was his first English speaking film), but just the film itself.  When they moved the chains it just came up short of the first down.

Getting back to my earlier complaint about the werewolf... holy fuck, where do I begin?  First, I have never laughed so hard at a monster reveal as I did while watching Late Phases.  It was just a man in a shitty fur suit and mask.  And when I say a "man" I mean that they spent no time in giving this werewolf any wolf features aside from claws, a poorly designed wolf face, and weird thin and long fur.  The transformation scene was also really cheesy aside from having the guy tear his skin off to have the wolf under it growing.  Maybe I'm being a snob, but when you have the transformation from American Werewolf in London looking as good as it did in 1981, and you come at me with this fucking 2014 shitshow you can suck a wet fart.

I give Late Phases 1 copy of Dog Man 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 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 5: Hangar 10 (2014) 1h 23m

This movie was The Blair Witch Project with the military and aliens instead of a witch.  That's it.  "Found" footage, getting lost in the woods, weird events, losing one of your members and finding them in the place where the big bad is; it's all there.  The only thing that was kind of interesting was the military helicopter doing sick air burnouts before it explodes and crashes.

I'm not wasting time writing more because I checked the fuck out mid-way through this movie and it just became background noise.

Hangar 10 gets 0 stupid alien clipart pics out of 5:

Day 4: Cam2Cam (2014) 1h 31m

If this film had balls I would fucking punt them sooooo hard just because I wouldn't want it to spawn any offspring.  Having that image firmly planted in your mind, know that this wasn't the worst film I've ever seen.  I just disliked it so much that I want to cause permanent bodily damage to it in order to preserve hope for our future.

Here's the rundown: An American girl, in Bangkok, thinks she's having webcam hanky panky with another female friend.  She realizes that something is up and then the person on the other end comes to her place, kills her, and cuts off her head.  Enter her sister coming to basically find her sister's head and what happened to her.  There's a series of bullshit and fake murder that leads her to find out that a group of people in the same apartment building as her sister.  They were doing some webcam hack/scam type deal and one of them took it too far and became a serial killer.  This guy gets killed half way through the damn movie by jumping in front of a truck.  The rest is just the lame unraveling of what happened, who was involved, and a bunch of severed lady heads underwater.  It's not worth explaining the actually workings of this plot or film.

The director of this film has some terrible back credits.  It's mostly sequels of sequels of horror movies past their prime.  In fact, the only thing he did I give a shit about was being a producer on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  Back to this bogus shit stain though, there is an over abundance of forced lesbianism in this film and it feels injected into the story.  It has the sense of "we're an independent film and this is artsy" pretentiousness to it.  Also, the chat language in this was absolute bullshit.  Nobdy typs lke this 4 n ntre cnvrsatn.  It's old people trying to be hip on what the kids do, even though these people are in their 20's and probably type like normal adults.

I felt like I was being dragged through this entire film.  The only smart line of dialogue was the one guy telling the sister "you traveled across the fucking planet for a head," which is true.  She's an idiot and your closure is bullshit.  Although, she got a box at the end of the film that I'm pretty sure was her sister's fish gnawed skull.  Fuck it.

I give Cam2Cam zero.  It doesn't even warrant me finding some image and making a rating scale for it.  It just gets a fucking zero.

Day 3: Mercy (2014) 1h 19m

Finally, 30 Days of Plight has come back to the United States for 2014's Mercy.  I feel like at this point in my life I should know that when I see either A) a star-studded cast, or B) "based on a work by Stephen King," then great fuckery is afoot.  Also, why is Mark Duplass seemingly cast as a creep and/or jerk so much?  Is it typecasting for how he is in real life?  I want to think Mark Duplass is a cool guy in real life. #Iwanttobelieve

Mercy is based off the Stephen King short story "Gramma" which I have never read.  Although, it's now added to my list of things that I say I kind of want to read but probably never will if I'm being honest with myself.  This movie starts out pretty strong with a man walking into a room with an axe, spinning it around in his hand, and promptly splitting his own skull with it, all in front of his wife.  This movie could have ended here and I would sing it's accolades from the highest of mountain tops.  Too bad there was still another hour and 17 minutes to go.

Our main character is George (Chandler Riggs of The Walking Dead fame and "hey Carl" memes).  His grandmother has a seizure and is put in a home.  Then, a year later, she has a stroke and George and his brother and mother return to fake West Virginia to take care of their ailing family member.  We meet George's creepy asshole uncle (Mark Duplass) and this married friend of George's mom that both George and his brother state they have no problem if this dude (Dylan McDermott) and their mom banged.  I feel like Dylan McDermott hasn't changed his look since the first season of American Horror Story and everyone is afraid to tell him to with each passing film.  To pull this back to the film, the long and short of it is that the in her youth the grandmother found this made-up witchcraft item known as a "weeping book" where if you cry on the pages while thinking of your wish it will make the ink appear.  She made some agreement with a demon named Hastur and had triplets.  The beginning scene with the axe was her and her husband.  Now Hastur has come to apparently try to use her body to possess George.  I'm kind of confused on the whole Hastur thing here, especially since I know that name from the Cthulhu mythos, and when they show him he looks nothing like the rad drawing of him they showed earlier.  He looks more like a dark variant of Moss-Man from the He-Man toys.  George defeats Hatsur by being brave and crying on the book while stating that he loved his grandma.  For real, the big "saves the day" thing is that weak.

Mercy was very good visually and talent wise, but I feel that the storytelling of it could have been done much better.  What it lacked in substance it tried to make up for with suspense-by-omission.  In this case it came off as poor writing, at least to me.  I can't really damn this film just because I didn't really like it all that much, but technically I can as this is a horror film review blog... so, suck it, Mercy!

I give Mercy 1 Dylan McDermott ass shot out of 5:

Day 2: Necrophobia (Necrofobia) (2014) 1h 15m

 
This movie wasn't really horror in a new dimension.  It's more of a horror/thriller in a dimension of things I've seen done before, just in Spanish! Think Fight Club, but instead of fighting it's a man having a nervous breakdown... AND MURDER! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Our guy, Dante, found his brother dead of an overdose.  From there he spirals into this odd mixture of time anomalies and dealing with a man in a black coat and hat he thinks is his dead brother.  During the course of this film Dante's (separated) wife is murdered and this sets the deaths in motion.  Dante runs around like an ass and eventually has a real confrontation with the man in black.  It's actually a part of him buried inside (not surprised) and the film pretty much starts over with him in the know.

This film isn't really worth watching.  It wasn't bad.  It just wasn't that interesting.  I can't even make jokes because this shit was just bland.  Fuckin' mayo on white bread boring.

I give Necrophobia 0 pairs of Guy Fieri looking scissors out of 5:

Day 24: Let Us Prey (2014) 1h 32m

I've started this post a few times now and each time I find myself getting stuck.  That's not to say that there isn't a lot to mention, or specific things to pick out and branch off on.  It's more of a way of stating that this film came from a lot of crazy angles... and I mean crazy.

Let Us Prey is a UK film set in a small Scotland town.  Our primary character, Rachel, is a rookie police officer that, through the passage of the film, we find that she has been through and survived her own personal hell.  This is important because during the course of the film, every other character aside from one (whom I will get to in a moment) will be forced to face their greatest sins and it drives them to madness and death.

The extra character that I'm speaking of is named Six, and supposedly died many years ago.  Think of Six as a person that isn't quite an angel, but not a demon either.  He exists simply to make those with darker secrets know that he knows and in turn the souls are collected by the end of the evening.  Those that he collects range from a man that beats his wife, to a closeted homosexual police chief, to a doctor that murdered his family in an experiment to find the human soul.

During the course of the Let Us Prey the film itself becomes more and more extreme.  At first it ranges from normal rage and insanity to an eventual bible-verse-quoting-wrapped-in-barwire-with-a-shotgun crazy.  That's a thing that happens.  The police chief is attempting to dispose of the bodies of gay men he slept with and killed and just kind of snaps.  Well, I guess snaps further.  Snap crackle pop?  That might get a cease and desist.

I give Let Us Prey 3 Judgement cards out of 5: