Welcome to Willits (2016) 1h 24m

Meth, not even twice!

I think I can sum up my entire intro and general thoughts on this film with a single picture.  I'm very much a "do what you want" type of person, so long as you aren't hurting yourself or someone else, but there are many moments during this film where I wanted to just kind of reach over and say "maybe you've had enough."  Either way, that image to the right sums up everything:

Set in Northern California, a group of youths are heading out on a camping trip in the area of Willits.  They acquire a burnt out Rory Culkin from a gas station and find themselves set up not far from a cabin with a grow operation.  Unluckily for them, it also contains two people that have such chemical filled brains that one believes he was abducted by aliens and he assumes almost anyone he sees is one of them returning for him.

Once you realize the true horror here is chemical dependency and abuse this film isn't really that great.  I was on board when the party added Mr. Culkin, and even the over the top cop TV show (starring Dolph Lundgren) they kept showing would break things up in a fun way, but I don't know if Welcome to Willits was trying to be funny or scary or what?

This feels like the kind of movie that someone in middle school would be into, only to reach adulthood and deny that they ever liked it.  This film is to that person as Coal Chamber is to me.  Only I'm in my 30's and you can't prove I ever owned any Coal Chamber merch or CDs as all of that evidence has been disposed of... I mean, if there ever was any evidence, which there never was!

I give Welcome to Willits 1 copy of My Sexy Alien Girlfriend out of 5:

The Rift (2016) 1h 30m

Congratulations to Serbia for finally making it our list of foreign films!  I don't know how it made its way to Netflix though.  I tried to go to the primary production company's website and my browser refused to let me go because it was an "unsecure" page.  Not that it matters that much since there are about 15 production groups associated with this film, but based on what we get, they could've given them $5 and some Subway coupons and made it in the credits...

The Rift starts out with a Liz, a mother that is in mourning for her young son.  The government doesn't care bout her loss and instead blows up her cell to say she has a mission.  Enter agent Smith, Liz's new partner.  After Liz and Smith meet they pick up two other people and head to the countryside to find a lost and crashed satellite.  Following the signal to a remote house this rag-tag group of jags end up finding an astronaut, but more importantly they find that those killed on that land will not stay dead.

The question this film left me with is why did Liz get called?  She tells us that her background is as a hacker that was arrested for hacking the NSA.  So if that's her specialization, why was she tapped to go find this astronaut under the lie of it being a satellite?  I don't think that in either case she'd be able to help.

It's an odd comparison, but The Rift reminded me a lot of Cube.  There is this sense of being trapped (as most of the film takes place at or in the house) all while avoiding death suddenly popping up.  At the same time, you have a character begin to lose his mind and attempt to pick people off in order to survive.  I wasn't a big fan of Cube so The Rift doesn't fair much better.

The Rift is just average when it comes to quality.  The end credit scene was the only thing that managed to capture my interest and I wish I had a movie focusing just on that concept rather than what we got.

I give The Rift 2 copies of The Killers "Spaceman" single out of 5:

Dead Awake (2016) 1h 39m

Yes! Back-to-back movies about sleep during my insomnia period!  I feel like Netflix is either pulling one of those "well, have you tried falling asleep" moments or, inversely, is trying to point out all the horrible things that can happen when one sleeps.  Either way, you are not helpful nor are you a doctor Netflix, so get off my sleep dick!

A long time ago I covered a documentary about Old Hag Syndrome/sleep paralysis called The Nightmare.  If you aren't familiar with Old Hag Syndrome it takes its name from an antiquated belief that if you had sleep paralysis then it was an old witch that was sitting on your chest and preventing you from moving.  This is our focus with Dead Awake.  Kate (or Beth, I forget as the same woman plays both of them) wakes up at night with the feeling that something is watching her and keeping her from moving.  After a weird birthday party where a woman literally stops the music to gossip about her husband that is in the room, Kate has a freak out where she shares a bit about her experiences.  Beth kind of believes her and after Kate dies in her sleep Beth begins to have the same experiences.  When Lori Petty is unable to give her answers she seeks out some semi-new age weirdo that claims he can help and tried to help her sister before Take Girl told her to avoid him.

Up front this movie gets very Nightmare on Elm Street, but not so much that it kills it.  What kills it is that Dead Awake is kind of boring.  Don't get me wrong, there are some scenes in this film that did it justice but not enough to create a comfortable set of peaks and valleys.  For example, the creature doing a Ring crawl up the hallway to the bed or the spider falling from the ceiling to land on Kate's open eyeball were each squirm worthy in their own way.  Yet these are two moments in what is endless research and Lori Petty not driving a tank and chugging a beer to fight this thing.  Sorry, but I fucking love Tank Girl.

I give Dead Awake 2 copies of Tank Girl out of 5:

Before I Wake (2016) 1h 37m

I've been having some serious issues with insomnia lately, so getting a film that revolves around sleeping is partially infuriating and partially calming.  The former because I'm jealous, but latter because at least I don't have to deal with the crap that they put up with in this film!

Before I Wake has our picturesque couple of Mark and Jessie.  They lost their son due to an accident and decided to adopt a boy that is around that age.  Enter Cody, an adorable boy that likes butterflies, has a shoe box full of caffeine pills, and comes with some serious emotional baggage.  You see, when Cody sleeps, his dreams become real, but so do his nightmares...

When I started watching this I was expecting it to fall into the void of generic book club-esq horror.  Where it had a scare element but the script was very cookie cutter.  Luckily, as I progressed through my viewing those fears fell by the wayside because everything leads up to a really well thought out explanation.  It also avoids having this happy ending.  Instead it takes what we have left and leaves us with a realistic (or at least as realistic as a movie with a dream child in it) "we'll make the best of this" ending.

I will say that Before I Wake does have some lulls in its story progressing and our first view of the nightmare creature had me making jokes about the alien from Signs haunting this kid, but all in all this is a solid film.  Child actors are also a coin flip if you're going to have a solid one or not and the kid that plays Cody definitely pulls his weight.  Watch this with your partner on the couch in the dark and you'll probably both enjoy it.  That is unless your baseline for horror is something like that Texas Chainsaw movie with Renee Zellweger.

I give Before I Wake 3.5 Signs aliens out of 5:

The Boy (2016) 1h 37m

I'm not sure about you, but any time I dare to enter a Wal-Mart I head straight to the DVD section just to check out the cheap shit.  Over the last six months or so I've seen copies of today's movie staring at me from the shelves.  I hadn't heard of it, never even bothered to pick it up and read the back, but I still felt strangely drawn to it.  Luckily it has shown up on Netflix recently and the dice were on my side when I rolled.

The Boy starts with Gretta, a woman attempting to put her life together after an abusive relationship.  She takes a short-term yet high paying nanny position away from home.  Upon arrival to the grand estate, Gretta is greeted by the parents and a life size porcelain doll, their son, Brahms.  Given a strict schedule to follow, our nanny is expected to wake up, dress, feed, and provide lessons to the doll while the parents are away on holiday.  Gretta instantly chalks this up as insane and shirks her duties until strange things begin to happen in relation to Brahms.

I'm jumping right in and saying this film has one of the best reveals I've seen in a long time.  Through the course of this entire movie we are left wondering if the doll is haunted.  Hearing disembodied footsteps, a child's voice, shadows moving under closed doors, and the doll ending up in places where it was not left.  So when the explanation comes blasting out of nowhere I popped hard for it.  One of the hypest moments I've had watching a recent horror film.

Alas, I do have a complaint, and that is that despite this amazing moment, I'm left the same way I felt after watching High Tension.  Now that I know where the rabbit hole goes, I have no reason to go back and watch this again on my own.  It was still a great movie, but ignorance is bliss when it comes to these types of horror films.  You want to be scared by the unknown.  Think of how boring Scooby Doo would be if Velma just walked up to the person from the start and said "It's this scumbag!"

I give The Boy 3.5 supposedly haunted dolls out of 5:

Friend Request (2016) 1h 32m

Okay, based on the name of this movie and the tag line on that poster I bet you're expecting me to just up and talk mad shit on this film.  The moment the I saw the title of this film I let out an audible groan of displeasure (and that poster really didn't help) but not all things are as they seem and sometimes you need to peel back the skin to get to the sweet sweet fruit inside.

Friend Request opens with a professor telling his class that a fellow student (Marina) had killed herself.  After some blasé reactions from most of the class, one of them asks if it was true that a video of the suicide was posted on the school website.  Flashback now to when our main girl, Laura, ends up meeting and befriending Marina.  Laura becomes Marina's Fakebook friend but after Marina feels her friendship was betrayed by Laura she practically attacks her before running off and her eventual suicide.  The suicide though is a ritual in which Marina becomes a ghost in the machine.  Through controlling Laura's Fakebook, Marina begins to turn people against Laura all while using the modern black mirrors of laptop and smartphone screens to kill her closest friends so that Laura knows what it really feels like to be "alone."

My overall opinion of this film is indifferent, but I think that's because I watch most of these horror movies by myself.  Once my viewing was complete I had the feeling that this would work much better as a Friday night with friends type of film.  It's made for a crowd to react to it and each other as opposed to one dude sitting on his couch, but I can recognize that and give it credit where it's due.

The concept feels a little bit immature to me, but I'm also long past being a college student, and even when I was, I wasn't a social butterfly so I don't have a frame of reference for this.  Friend Request did have one moment that I popped for and that was that early on we're told Marina has Trichotillomania (a hair pulling disorder).  Later in the film we are shown her bald spot it has become this creepy wasp nest and there was a flash of "Oh shit! someone took some time to think of that and it really pays off!"  There's also the black mirrors existing in technology as one of those techno-pagan things I never thought of but its inclusion only helped this film.

So overall, watch this with friends.  Order pizza, have some snacks, get caffeinated or inebriated, and have a good time.

I give Friend Request 2.5 Japanese Giant Hornets out of 5:

Havenhurst (2016) 1h 20m

UGGGHHHHHHH!  I can't even write a proper introduction to this film because I just want to tear into how bad it was.  It's going to be that kind of review.  Prepare your butthole for the tragedy that is Havenhurst.

Working as a strange halfway house, Havenhurst is a large apartment building where as long as you remain clean from your vice or villainy then you can remain as long as you like.  However, should you dip your toe back in, then you will be given an eviction notice, only the evicted never actually leave the building.  We find this out as Jamie comes to try and find her sister Jackie that has disappeared after being supposedly "evicted."  With the help of a young girl named Sarah she finds notes and photos left by Jackie that show the building shifting and changing.  Hidden doors, rooms changing size, and passages between the walls all point to a weird combination of Dr. Satan and H.H. Holmes.

Speaking of H.H. Holmes, two of my notes in order just say "weird H.H. Holmes style traps / never mind, there's H.H. Holmes stuff."  They just straight up make this a relative of Mr. Holmes with a secret room full of books, plans, and paper clippings from him.  I'm not sure why but this reveal just pissed me off.  It didn't help that this movie was pretty boring and just made me want to watch American Horror Story Hotel instead as it had a much greater depth.

One of the sons being this strange Dr. Satan character with weird arm attachments didn't help either.  Then they try to sneak in this semi-unexpected heel turn at the end but at that point I was already balls deep in cleaning my living room and the movie was just background noise.  This movie exists as one of those films that bland ass 35+ white women would watch at night, in the dark, with a glass of whatever wine they drown their 9-to-5 life in and then they tell their friends it was amazing, scary, and such a psychological thriller!  I tell my friends this is a fart after you've had too much sashimi!

I give Havenhurst 0 plates of delicious sashimi out of 5:

Yoga Hosers (2016) 1h 28m

Back when I was a teenager my mom took me to a Blockbuster to rent some movies and in the process she bought me used copies of Clerks and Mallrats on VHS (as if this story wasn't already dated).  I had never seen either, didn't know they were the same director, I just heard that they were good.  I was instantly hooked.  So much so that I have friendships that were solidified thanks in part to a mutual love of Kevin Smith films.  Anything that he's released under his View Askew productions I own and love (except Jersey Girl but I don't need to defend my negative views on that).  So going into Yoga Hosers I had high hopes... probably too high.

Yoga Hosers takes place in the future of the Tusk universe.  When they're not closing it to have band practice in the back, Colleen and Colleen (Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp) continue to work at their lame convenience store .  The Colleens get invited to a grade 12 party by two boys, but are forced to work that night.  In retaliation for this unscheduled shift, they close the store and invite the boys to party at the store.  This male duo actually faked the party with plans to sacrifice the Colleens to Satan.  Rather than our dark lord getting these girls souls, Bratzis (tiny Nazi bratwurst men), end up killing the would-be Satanists through anal violation.  This leads to a whole thing about a secret Canadian Nazi base under the Eh-2-Zed and a giant meat monster that gets defeated by yoga.

Mr. Smith, should you ever come across this review, plus understand I'm not trying to be mean, I'm still a fan of your work, but what in the ever lasting fuck was this film?!  The plot passes absurd and isn't even funny.  Every single one of the jokes is ham-fisted with this "See this joke?!  DO YOU SEE IT! IT'S A JOKE!" delivery behind it.  This is extra strong when it comes to anything pointing at the fact that this is in Canada, including bad accents.  There are callbacks to his previous films, including the obligatory "I'm not even supposed to be here today," but it felt dirty.  It made me have that feeling I get now when I see they're rebooting a cartoon or movie series strictly for that nostalgia grab.

The one shining light in this film, at least for me, was Justin Long's hilarious Yoga poses and terms.  Other than that, this just didn't do it for me.  It saw the shark from the start and just took a running leap over it.

I give Yoga Hosers 1 Mario Lemieux out of 5:

Cabin Fever (2016) 1h 39m

I didn't realize until the end of this film that I was watching a remake of the original movie.  They literally took the script from the Eli Roth original and did a re-shoot.  Was this really necessary?  I know I'm jumping into the shit talk on this way to early but for real?  It's not like you were rebooting the property or anything.  It's only made worse because I'm not really a fan of the original Cabin Fever to begin with.

If you're unfamiliar with the plot, a group of college kids rent a cabin in the country.  Early on we know that there is some sort of viral or bacterial outbreak based on an exploding dog named Pancakes.  After one of these college jag bags finds a gun at the cabin and accidentally shoots an infected man in the woods.  The man finds his way to their cabin where he vomits blood everywhere before being set on fire and runs off to dive into the local reservoir.  The disease begins to develop in our cabin kids and they all end up dead, one way or the other.

Neither this, nor the original are really scary as far as horror movies go.  They really get classified as body-horror for the squick feelings you get from seeing huge wet open sores or someone shaving their legs and literally shaving off strips of flesh.  The latter of which I don't remember seeing in this re-make.  I covered the prequel movie Cabin Fever 3: Patient Zero a while ago but it doesn't add much to the lore.  It just makes me wonder what Sean Astin needed the money for.

Here is my head cannon for why this film even exists: Travis Z tells Eli Roth he wants to direct a movie but doesn't have the background to do anything big.  Eli Roth figures that Cabin Fever was his big breakout so he gives Travis Z the script, says he'll produce it, and assumes that lightning will strike twice.  Instead it hit a small child off to the side and both Eli and Travis are labeled as witches and burned at the stake.  The End.

I give the 2016 remake of Cabin Fever 1 Eli Roth PETA ad out of 5:

The Transfiguration (2016) 1h 37m

I don't think anyone can say that they never emulated (even a tiny bit) a character they saw in a movie or on TV.  To this day it still takes effort to not act like Razor Ramon if I'm using a toothpick, and he was just emulating Scarface!  Also, as kids, I'm sure we all ran around with plastic vampire fangs cutting our gums, drool running from our mouths, as we mumbled about sucking blood.  There is a line that most of us don't cross though.  We don't begin to believe we are who or what we are copying.  So when someone blurs that line between reality and fantasy, we get something like today's film.

The Transfiguration focuses on Milo, a teenage boy living in project housing with his older brother.  He's an outcast, friendless, and referred to by others as "freak."  His primary solace is found in his collection of dubbed vampire flicks and online nature videos.  Eventually he befriends a girl named Sophie and she gets close.  So close that she finds out that his obsession with vampirism goes beyond watching it on the screen.

I wasn't sure where this film was going while I was watching it.  It took elements that I normally find frustrating while watching a movie and turned them into art.  There are long periods of just ambient noise of the world around Milo, and rather than push me away from the film it pulled me into his isolation.  I kept waiting for the real supernatural element to drop and when it didn't come I felt as though I lost my footing.  Stumbling to understand Milo's actions more and more.

 There's also a great scene which reminds me of Taxi Driver, when Robert De Niro takes Jodie Foster on a date and it's to the porno theater because he doesn't have the social experience to know better.  In this, Milo hangs out with Sophie and he puts on one of those PETA-esq videos of how a cow is killed and processed.  He has this flat affect while watching it whereas she is revolted and leaves him wondering what he did wrong.

This isn't a film for just anyone, and I wouldn't recommend it for a movie night with friends, but I will say if you have some free time and can actively watch this film, then do it.

I give The Transfiguration 4 Barnabas Collins portraits out of 5:

Boys in the Trees (2016) 1h 52m

Initially I wasn't sure if this movie was set in the 90's or if Australia is somehow two decades behind us when it comes to music.  It was probably one of my least valid thoughts about Australia ever, not that I'm thinking about Australia a lot.  It's not like I sit by the phone waiting for Australia to return my calls.  We only went on one date after all...

Boys in the Trees is set in 1997, just so we're all on the same page.  Of course the soundtrack of Marilyn Manson, The Presidents of the United States of America, and Rammstein should tip you off that we're in that decade... or that you're riding in my car.  Being that this isn't in my car, you're in Australia where a bunch of skater kids are dicks to another boy (Jonah).  We find out that our main character (Corey) was once friends with the outcast but Corey ran away when Jonah needed him.  Later that evening Jonah wipes out a quarter pipe and hits his head.  He convinces Corey to walk him home but their journey takes them further down memory lane than initially thought.  The whole time things seem off with Jonah.  It isn't until we reach the end of the journey do we find out why.

This isn't a horror movie.  It's a hard drama that just happens to have a small supernatural reveal.  However, this film does a really good job of making you feel as though something is going to jump out at you.  Stories of ghosts, shadows of wolves, and ominous visuals trick your mind into expecting the spook that never comes.  The fact it's Halloween night only adds to this false tension, especially when we encounter the gang of skater miscreants.

I'm not going to spoil it, but there's a really good moment at the end where the "leader" of the skaters does something out of character and the other skaters all remove their Halloween masks.  It's very much a "under this monstrous exterior they're still just lost boys" moment, but it creates such a sense of change in that world.  Or maybe it's a sense of self-realization among that group.  Either way, it makes the overall ending that much stronger.  At least to me.  You might totally hate that kind of thing, but then the real monster was you all along!

I give Boys in the Trees 3.5 boy in tree Hummels out of 5:

The Eyes of My Mother (2016) 1h 16m

If you take nothing else away from the entirety of this website, for as long as it may exist, I want you to remember one thing:  You can't spell "fart" without "art."  Now keep this in mind because I'm going to drag you along with me through this film student project.

IMDB's description for this film is "A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life," but that's too vague for The Eyes of My Mother.  Francisca's mother was a surgeon in Portugal.  I'm not sure why they're in bumfuck USA (probably something dumb like love) but the mother has been passing her skills and knowledge onto her child.  Then, one day, a man shows up on the property and kills the mother.  The husband comes home, knocks the man out, and chains him up in the barn.  The girl eventually cuts his tongue and eyes out, but not before he answers her question of why he does such things.  Everything from this point is dumber than all the preceded it.

This is something that I would expect to see at a local film festival.  It's entirely in black and white, switches between English and Portuguese, and has long static shots of people sitting in a room or a car driving across the screen or some bullshit.  The attempts at body horror aren't as shocking as they want them to be.  In a time where we have torture porn like the Saw and Hostel films, you can't bring your tiny indie weenie to the big dick competition and expect to stand up against porn star meat slings!

I'm not totally writing this film off as it might be for someone, somewhere.  It just did nothing for me.

I give The Eyes of My Mother 1 ancient Japanese scrolls with men farting out of 5:

The Veil (2016) 1h 33m

Oooohhhhh shit!  I fucking love cults!  Between this NXIVM stuff that's all coming out, a documentary series on the Rajneesh group from 80's Oregon, and meeting someone currently in a legit cult, I've been getting my fill recently.  Now throw a bunch of supernatural shit in it and I'm all on board.  I don't want to join your cult, I just want to watch the craziness.

Think of the Jim Jones cult, then cut that down in size and put them in the south of rural America.  After this group appears to have all committed suicide, the only remainder is a small girl, Sarah.  Fast forward to her adulthood and an indie documentarian wants to take Sarah back to the land where the cult was and film.  The thing that the crew doesn't know is that more than Sarah have a connection to the events that happened there, and the cult killed themselves because they knew they would come back.

I'm legitimately all in with this film.  The setting is creepy, there are strange unexplained things happening all around them, and throughout the whole film you just keep getting handed more and more pieces to the puzzle.  Then, once it's complete, you're treated to one of those "holy fuck!" moments.  It's worth it, 100% worth it.

I give The Veil 5 cult members out of 5:

The Curse of Sleeping Beauty (2016) 1h 29m

Someday, I can only hope to have an unknown uncle leave me a house full of mannequin parts and blood magick.  I have an entire branch of the family tree that split from my side a few generations back, so it could happen.  Suddenly I could get a letter in the mail about secret basement rooms in a creep house while I have dreams of a mildly attractive scene girl.  I mean, I don't care about the girl, but the creep house I'm all in for!

So that's part of the plot of The Curse of Sleeping Beauty.  Thomas inherits a large and strange country home from an unknown uncle.  In the letter he is told of how he is tied to the house by blood and to never go into the secret basement.  After a quick visit, in hopes to get the house ready to sell, he finds out that it's associated with a series of disappearances and carries a heavy anxiety with the locals.  With the help of a local woman (that is searching that home for her brother), Thomas uncovers some apocalyptic shit involving demons, djinn, and a mysterious woman known as Briar Rose that is sleeping somewhere below.

This was a surprisingly good movie.  There was a great mix moments where you're holding your breath in expectation and straight up visual horror.  The application of the mannequins in the house and their role in the story improved with each bit of lore.  The set, prop, and character design gave me this sense of Guillermo Del Toro meets City of Lost Children meets Silent Hill:Revelations.  The only thing that felt out of place was the strange hacker character that they bring in to help translate a journal.  He doesn't serve any real purpose except to have an "oh shit" moment while everyone else is traversing the chamber of secrets like Harry fuckin' Potter.

The very ending of this film appears to be leaving things open for another film.  If so, I hope their plan is to work through other fairy tales because this really should be a one-and-done.  If not, they'll kill what momentum they had going for it.  At the same time, this could also turn into a really long and shitty episode of Supernatural if they fuck it up.

I give The Curse of Sleeping Beauty 3.5 copies of Grimm's Fairy Tales out of 5:

Uncaged (2016) 1h 35m

I've been disappointed by films before.  Had my heart broken.  Been starving hysterical naked, dragging myself through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.  Okay, that's actually the greatest minds of Ginsberg's generation but you get the point.  There are films that I hope will bring good things once I hit play.  I assumed that a werewolf film called Uncaged could take me places.  Instead it just left me on my couch with a want for something real.

Uncaged puts us shortly after our main guy's 18th birthday.  Apparently becoming a man also includes becoming a wolfman for him.  His uncle invites our guy to his cabin for winter break.  It will apparently be empty and this is also the time that his wolfy-ness should be kicking in.  Wolfman invites his misogynist-hyper-sexual-focused-but-virgin cousin and their friend.  Our wolfdude begins to realize there's something wrong with him and eventually gets tied up with a local crime person.  Wolf shit happens, this movie is bad, and they try to pull off a low budget version of the American Werewolf in London change but end up giving us a wolf snout, teeth, and an Amish beard they picked up from the Spirit store.  It's butt!  BUUUUUTTTTTTT!

I think the moment I gave up on this film was about two minutes in when the cousin is having a conversation and says "she is thirsting for my penis."  That's pretty much how that guy talked the whole time, unless he was making a gay joke.  His dying wish was for a prostitute so he wouldn't die a virgin.  Well virginity is a social construct and not a real thing.  Do you know what is real?  This movie, but it needs to be forgotten.  Left as a bad dream best forgotten for it's terrible writing, boring looking wolf, and all around aura of an egg fart.

I give Uncaged 0 copies of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" single out of 5:

The Void (2016) 1h 30m

You know the beginning to the Outer Limits?  Where a monotone voice tells you to just sitting back and relaxing because "they" control your TV and are about to take you on an adventure?  That's pretty much what happened to me when I started watching this movie.  Rather than a descent into madness it was an ascension into it.  You go willingly as opposed to fighting tooth and nail.

The Void throws us right into it with two men attempting to kill everyone in a remote country house.  A survivor makes it onto the road where the local Sheriff notices him and transports our man to the closest hospital (20 minutes away, just to show that this is fuckall USA).  We're then given about an hour or so of insanity, Silent Hill-esq monsters, crazy cultists, and a doctor that read too much Lovecraft.

I really liked this film.  It felt like someone was turning up some sort of intensity knob slowly from the start, but paced it so well that when you reached the end everything was at its breaking point.  I could see the influences of Lovecraft but more so I saw the influence of the first two Hellraiser movies.  Nods to Frank, the labyrinth beast chasing Kirsty in the hospital, and the Leviathan are all present but not heavy handed.  It's tastefully done... you know, as hell creatures go.

I also like that "The Void" isn't just an arbitrary title.  There is a literal void which exists in a space between the folds of our perceived universe. Somewhere between life and death, somewhere with weird muscle monsters and giant triangles.  Actually I just made this sound like a gay club...

I give The Void 4.5 bloody Franks out of 5 (I'd watch it again, but I probably won't buy it unless the DVD has amazing extras):

Dark Signal (2016) 1h 38m

My husband hates when I tell stories.  Despite the fact that I write summaries on this blog, when it comes to telling an actual story I feel the need to make sure all my bases are covered.  So instead of a simple "the cat farted today" I tend to add in extra details to set up the situation.  It usually kills the story.  This movie though, it made my story telling seem like the greatest oral literature ever.

Dark Signal is like someone took a bunch of speed and then audio recorded their ramblings to write down later.  Then, instead of editing, they just went with it.  I'm going to try to keep this short.  There's a serial killer named the Wedding Band killer because he cuts his victim's ring finger off (although, later he seems to just take any finger).  Laurie, our main character, needs money for her and her wheelchair using son.  The son is the only person we know nothing about even though he has a demon voice for a bit, and even that gets ignored as far as an explanation.  Laurie has an online friend named Ben who works at a radio station that has just been bought out and so the host is doing her last show.  There's a stupid amount of back story for this radio host for no reason except to tie her to the killer of this film.   Also, they have a psychic medium on as a guest (for some reason) and they contact a ghost which is telling them about a possible victim of the murderer.  Back to Laurie and her boyfriend that offers her a cut of the cash if she helps him rob a house.  They go to the house but it ends up that the killer is also in the house.  A ton of unnecessary story telling and explanations happen, the killer is revealed, I wanted to flip my coffee table in disgust.

"The spirit of a murdered girl returns with a message for the staff of a local radio station" was the summary I was given for Dark Signal.  I thought I was going to get some sort of Pontypool with ghosts instead of zombies.  This film is seriously four different movie plots they crammed together.  We have Laurie and the robbery, the radio station, the ghost the psychic contacts, and the serial killer.   Calm the fuck down and pick one, maybe two, and go with it!  You don't need all of this!  Aside from a telegraphed jump scare there isn't anything else to complain about with Dark Signal, but I can't let this slide.  Don't watch this.  It's not worth the loss of what precious time we have on this Earth.  I took this bullet for you, you owe me a life debt.  Expect a call from me at some point requesting a pizza.

I give Dark Signal 0 danger signs out of 5:

The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016) 1h 18m

If you look at the little bit of white text under the title on this film's poster you'll notice it says "inspired by the true story."  So of course this sent me into a research spiral five seconds into the damn movie when it quotes some random reverend about hearing voices to murder.  The axe murders in Villisca, Iowa was an actual event that happened in 1912.  The variation in this film and the actual story (ghost possession aside) was that there were multiple suspects but the Reverend was the only one tried... twice.  The first time it was a hung jury and the second time he was acquitted.  Although he did have a history of being a perv and later ended up in a psych ward after sending what could be the first documented unsolicited dick pics.

The Axe Murders of Villisca establishes way too much personal back story for three twenty-somethings posing as high school students.  Somehow this group of faux misfits end up going on a road trip to this murder house so the one guy can record it for their YouTube ghost hunting show.  After they're booted from the home because the girl is a dunce they agree to break into the house at night and use candles and dowsing rods to speak to spirits.  It's a slapdash operation but one Instagram post later we have the weird semi-jock and his friend drive out in an attempt to cause some sort of harm to the others.  Instead, the demon or ghost or whatever is in this house possesses the semi-jock and he kills his friend and then others get possessed and everything becomes a mess.

The only upside to this film was the fact that it made me seek out information about an interesting unsolved murder.  But a film shouldn't make me want to do that during the whole film.  This was an IFC film but it feels more like some farm club production that got called up to warm the bench for the pro team and jumped on ice during some sort of line change confusion (I played ice hockey most of my life, those are my go-to sports metaphors, deal with it).  The actors were too old for their parts, there's no real understanding of why multiple people are possessed at the same time or if the mirrors hold a greater meaning to things.  Also, did they have Fireball candy back in 1912 and how did a fucking Fireball from 1912 exist to modern day?!  Fuckin' ghost magic!  Too bad they couldn't have used that to make this movie good.

I give The Axe Murders of Villisca 1 copy of So I Married an Axe Murderer out of 5 but only because this film lead to me learning something:

Here Alone (2016) 1h 38m

About 10 years ago I was working for a city library system.  One of my co-workers had just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road and suggested it to me on the grounds that he thought I would like it and he wanted someone to discuss it with.  He was wrong on the first part and my biggest complaint was that the book had a repeating pattern of "nothing but us/oh shit! danger/nothing but us/etc."  I bring this up because today's film was like a shittier version of me reading that book.

Here Alone is a post-zombie-apocalypse film where our female protagonist is the surviving member of her family.  We get flashbacks of her learning outdoorsman (outdoorswoman?) techniques from her husband and brief moments of what happened (viral outbreak) but mostly this is just the lady of the woods eating worms and pissing in buckets.  Eventually a man and his step-daughter end up in the film in an attempt to break up the fact that now it's just three people in the woods, but whatever.  There's a brief heel turn which I think is because the step-daughter has a lady boner for her not-dad but I might be writing my on narrative into this film out of boredom.

There's not much here.  I think we see a total of three zombies and one just looks like he's a metal head swinging his hair around to some thrash.  I wish the only person in this entire film was the woman to really push that feeling of self-survival.  Otherwise there is nothing to write about, or watch, or care about here.  Just the lady of the woods covering herself in dookie and dumping buckets of piss on herself.  So if you have filth fetishes, then this film is for you.

I give Here Alone 0 copies of The Bad Movie Bible out of 5:

The Disappointments Room (2016) 1h 25m

I like learning new things.  My mind is a collection of random and pretty much useless facts that exist for moments like this where I get to impart something I learned.  So here goes.  A "disappointments room" is a real architectural piece.  When someone, usually of affluence, would have a child that had some form of birth defect or a form of neruo-diversity that would cause them to pass as anything but a "regular" child then they could end up in one of these rooms for the rest of their life.  The family or possibly one staff member would help take care of them but they were hidden from the public.  While archaic, there have been recent cases of such things in Louisiana and Texas.  This film takes its influence from, of all things, and episode of an HGTV show where one of these rooms was shown.  The one in the show was actually made to look like a small home and still seemed  to have love with it as opposed to the one in this film.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The Disappointments Room has a family of three leaving their city life to move into a grotesquely large home in the country.  Abandoned for years, the building requires a lot of work and since the wife is an architect she has taken up the task of working on it.  When exploring the acting she finds a chest blocking a locked door.  The key is found and our leading lady opens the door. This is where things get weird because a lot of this is pointed at being ghosts of the original owners, but our woman is the only one that really has any direct interaction with these spirits.  There is one side character that ends up hanged in a tree by a grave which, now that I think of it, never gets dealt with.  Either way, the room causes something to happen.

If that last paragraph didn't point it out, I felt confused during this film.  We had scenes of horrific situations like a dog attack on their young son or a ghost attempting to smother the same kid, but they would be strange hallucinations or thoughts the mother was having.  There was also some sort of odd sexual tension between the mother and the side character but it really didn't need to exist and served no part of the story.  There was also an adorable fluffy cat that was killed off camera. If I haven't made it obvious in my time doing this blog, fuck that noise!

The ending of this film was also confusing.  Everyone just seems like "Okay, let's leave this place" and is totally fine with each other despite the big crazy ending.  Also, the door is taken off its hinges and put aside but I guess the ghosts fixed it so it could slam in the last shot?  Fuckin' handyghosts!  How does one summon those to fix things in the house because I need some electrical work done in our home?

I give The Disappointments Room 1 HGTV logo out of 5: