Play Dead (2009) 1h 28m

Play Dead came on a DVD as an extra film with Last of the Living (which I also haven't watched).  By association I assumed that Play Dead would be a horror film, but it came across as more of a thriller comedy.  The latter of those descriptors it looses relatively quick.  In truth, this is the an awkward teenager of a movie where it wants to fit in somewhere but it really isn't sure where it does so the whole thing tries to fit into a bunch of different cliques.  I could make a "horror because of Fred Durst" joke, but I'll be up front and say that he does a decent job.

Our main character in Play Dead is Ronnie.  He's an actor best known for his work in a show that wasn't quite a Power Rangers rip off, but not quite as bad as Big Bad Beetle Borgs.  So let's say a VR Troopers knock off.  After his stint as the blue one, his promising career went nowhere.  He has a breakdown after a casting interview and drives until his car dies.  He finds himself in the middle of nowhere when he meets Ledge (Durst) and is given a ride into town.  He then finds himself on the wrong side of the local drug dealer and calls in his old hero team in an effort to save himself and the town.

Y'all cast the wrong member of Limp Bizkit.

As I mentioned above, this film doesn't know what it wants to be.  The beginning has a lot of poorly written comedy scenes in it, including that Durst's character is a small town simple creep which they try to turn around to make Ledge an exploited victim of the situation.  It's a poor transition from someone that has a dead DEA agent in their bathtub to unlikely hero/sidekick.  Jake Busey is here as well, looking like the most redneck version of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) I've ever seen.

As a whole, Play Dead can just be labeled as "competent."  Everything that makes this a movie it does well enough, but it just reaches that bare minimum.  There are definitely better and worse films out there.  If you're looking for something that's horror though, this isn't it.

I give Play Dead 1/2 a opossum playing dead out of 5:

Spawn (1997) 1h 36m

If I ever have a child and he asks me "Papa, what were the 90's like," (I picture my child as a small British boy if you're wondering what that should sound like) then I would show him this movie.  Then if he asked me what "horror" is then I would tell him "not fucking Spawn the movie!"  Unfortunately Netflix thinks Spawn is a horror movie, so here we go.  Fuckin' 90's out the ass!

If you're not familiar with Spawn, this is a film adaptation of a comic book.  Originally created by Todd McFarlane, Spawn really pushed comics in both good and bad directions.  I could go into this for more than I could talk about this movie but this is a fucking horror film blog!  Not comic nerd talk!  That's if I want to start another blog.

The plot of Spawn is simple:  Al Simmons is murdered, then he gets offered a chance at revenge by the ruler of Hell (Malebolgia) if he promises to lead the army of Hell once Al is done.  Thus, Al becomes Spawn.  We have our angel and devil characters in Cogliostro and Clown.  The one attempts to turn him to the side of good while the other works for Malebolgia and pushes for chaos.

Clown is what truly makes this movie.  John Leguizamo fucking destroys everyone else in this film with this character.  Who would have thought?  You don't hear much about him, but this one film he nails the role perfectly.  Also he actually bit into a piece of pizza covered in live maggots during the filming.  Way to go the extra mile, John.

As for the rest of Spawn... well... this film combines the worst elements of the early comics and puts them in here while also glossing over the concept of "when you use up your power you die for real."  Hell, the comics eventually dropped this plot device too.  There used to be a counter at the end of every issue telling you how much power Spawn had left, then they deus ex'd it and that was that.  So this movie is mostly guns and really really dated CGI.  Fucking goofy flames, Malebolgia does not hold up in CGI form, an army of CGI spawns that move in 3-second loops and have multiples of themselves... shit is wiggity wiggity wack by today's standards.  As a kid though I fucking loved all of it...

So while not a horror film, and still tinted a bit by nostalgia, this film ends up being a fun mess.  The soundtrack is full of spooky 90's bands like Marilyn Manson and "techno."  I use quotes because electronic music and the EDM scene has come a long fucking way from when we used to just refer to it as solely "techno."

You don't have to know a thing about Spawn to watch it, and that may work out to your advantage.  Otherwise you end up nitpicking shit like me.

I give Spawn 2.5 bad CGI bee things out of 5: