The Maus (2017) 1h 30m

War is a horror unto itself.  The entire concept seems so foreign to a lot of us because we never served in the military and the last real war or battle fought on U.S. soil was the Civil War (with the exception of maybe Pearl Harbor).  Yet there are countries that are at war or face some form of occupation currently and their daily lives are horror, or have been horror.  PTSD, a lack of people able to trust individuals, or just the existence of misanthropy and entropy when it comes to life... it's a horror that we hope to never see.

The Maus takes us to post-war Bosnia (although this film is from Spain).  A woman and her German boyfriend returned to the country because the bodies of her parents were finally found in a mass grave and she wanted to give them a proper burial.  While en route to their flight the SUV ends up in a mine crater and unable to continue.  Two Serbs come up behind our couple while they walk on the path to get help.  Ignoring the warning the Serbs are yelling about danger ahead, the couple's dog sets off a land mine and the woman is caught in the blast.  This is where we get our first dream sequence which may be more of a premonition of dangers to come.

There's a supernatural horror element in The Maus that becomes the focus for a short time.  It's mostly used as a deus ex machina but I wish it didn't exist at all.  There is a much more visceral horror present here with the constant questioning of trust and safety, prejudice existing from growing up in a war torn area, and the dream sequences which create these incredibly uncomfortable feelings within the viewer. I think that this film makes those moments much more frightening than a supernatural being ever could.

I do have to nitpick a few things, just because they bugged me and killed my immersion in the film.  First, when the couple is walking they come across a jeep and the boyfriend finds a walkie talkie in the bag, all the while completely ignoring the gigantic CB antenna on the top of the jeep!  Use that to call for help you dolt!  Second, when we finally see the demon it looks like Gray Fox from Metal Gear Solid, just in earth tones.  It's not a bad design, but it made me more hyped for Metal Gear at that moment than this film.

All in all The Maus isn't bad, but I don't feel like it falls under horror.  Yes, I've spent most of this talking about real life physical and personal psychological horror but if I had to classify it in horror I'd say it's a dramatic horror film.  That feels awkward to say though as drama and horror don't tend to overlap but this isn't a thriller.  The real villain here is just humanity being opportunistic and shitty.

I give The Maus 3 MGS Gray Foxes out of 5:

8th Cut Begins! Bedeviled (2016) 1h 31m

When I was a kid I was easily scared by all kinds of dumb stuff.  Most of it being something related to the supernatural, but all of it being stupid shit that kids get scared of.  The concept of "apps" didn't exist until after I was out of college, but let's just say, for one minute, that it existed when I was a child.  There is no way in hell I'd be scared of an app with a silhouette of Pee Wee Herman on it!

Bedeviled is like someone took the original Nightmare on Elm Street and decided to make Freddy some sort of spooky demon in app form.  After a local girl is found dead of what seems to be heart failure all of her friends receive a request from her to download Bedeviled.  What starts out as a much better Siri turns into an evil presence that feeds off of fear and has no problem bending time and space to scare the hell out of anyone with the app.

If I wanted someone to try and scare me in regards to the use of technology then I would show my grandparents my iPhone and then proceed to hear all of the crazy shit they picked up from TV shows about how it will probably kill me.  This film had that overtone of "those damn kids and their cell phones," woven inside of it.  Yet, it tried to stay hip with the kids by mentioning stuff like BitTorrent and having phone hacking.  It does lose touch again quickly though when a cop starts listing off possible drugs one of the kids might be on and it goes "...molly, skunk...poppers, sniffing each other's dirty underwear, bath salt orgies!"  Remember kids:  only a cop will ask you for something like molly or skunk, and if they ask for poppers or where the bath salt orgies are then they're a pervert.

There are some saving graces in this film.  The entity can only exist and manipulate digital technology so anything analog is safe.  They end up finding a reel-to-reel recording which helps the remaining two in their attempt to delete this thing from their phones.  The app tricking a lot of them into revealing their biggest fears to use against them was also well done, except for the teddy bear.  That was just trying too hard.  The final nod (and I assume homage to Elm Street) was the mom ending up with the app on her phone at the end.  It was like the mannequin being pulled through the door by Freddy.  Unfortunately, these just weren't enough to bring me around to recommend this movie.

I give Bedeviled 1 iPhone 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:

XX (2017) 1h 20m

Anthology horror films have started to pop up more and more.  We have the V/H/S films, Southbound, The ABCs of Death series, and now we have XX.  An anthology where the focus is on the women in horror that aren't scream queens, but are the ones that make the scream queens scream.

XX consists of four short films: The Box (based off of a Jack Ketchum short story) where a boy catches a glimpse of what's inside of stranger's present and he is never the same.  The Birthday Party which has a mother about to host her daughter's seventh birthday party only to find her husband dead of pills and booze and she tries to hide his corpse.  Don't Fall, where four 20-something campers stumble across an area which caries a violent curse.  Then the final short is Her Only Living Son, in which a single mother is dealing with the fact that her son is coming into his own around his 18th birthday and the past catches up to them.  All four of these are framed by strange stop motion sequences which I could only describe as if a living house were into gothic-lolita.

I was glad this film came up because I spent a lot of time this week trying to remember where I saw The Box before.  It's my call for the strongest of these shorts but each of them are really well done.  If I had to pin one down as the weakest short then it would be The Birthday Party. I'm only saying this because when you get to the very end you realize it was a 15 minute set-up for a joke, and it's one of those jokes though where you kind of laugh but then do an exhaled sigh at the end because a part of you just died for laughing.  It is worth watching though because the styling and usage of color are fantastic.  Also, I would like a large purple toilet costume.

I give XX 3.5 Rosie the Riveters out of 5:

Ava's Possessions (2015) 1h 29m

Someone reviewed this film as "The Hangover but with a lot more demons."  It's up there on that poster.  If The Hangover has become the standard description for any film where someone has a loss of memory and tries to figure out what happened during that time then that sucks.  The Hangover was a terrible movie and aside from the point I just touched on is not relatable to this film at all.

Ava's Possessions starts with an exorcism.  Once cleansed, to avoid jail time from her month long demon possession, Ava agrees to go to a recovery group for people that were inhabited by a demon.  Much like a regular 12-steps recovery, Ava has to seek out the people that she wronged to apologize but also to put the pieces together from her lost time.

This film had some great casting. Wass Stevens (that I know from being Max in Daria) was the demon possession counselor, Deborah Rush (Strangers With Candy) played Ava's mother, and mother fucking Carol Kane (Adam's Family Values / The Princess Bride / Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt / a million other awesome things) as the magick shop owner all killed it in Ava's Possessions.  Also, after a ton of possessed girl movies, it was great to see one just treat the possession with a recovery program.  It feels like a much more "modern" view instead of bumbling attempts with religious archaism or an obsession with The Exorcist.

Also, I want to give a quick shout out to whomever the person was that had to do the research for the demonic possession spell portion of the movie.  It was kind of a hodgepodge of stuff but I recognized the parts that were (if I'm remembering these details right) a Hermetic spell to ask for the favor of a demon.  It looked as the sigil on the floor was either Goetic or Enochian.  So thumbs fucking up for that.

On the flip side to this praise, the things I liked in this movie were overshadowed by the fact that it felt more like I was watching this for three hours as opposed to an hour and a half.  There was always something going on but the pacing just felt off.  Which leads me to my other complaint of the third act of this film had its own third act where they pushed all these reveals and explanations to the last little bit.  It felt really wrapped up well but instead of letting it ride they threw more and more onto you.  You probably aren't going to make a sequel to this.  This isn't like when Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm street were made and you needed to add a scene on to make a franchise.  Just let it go!

I give Ava's Possessions 2 Regans out of 5:

The Damned (2013) 1h 27m

I've learned a lot of odd things from horror film logic.  One of them is the following:  If you come across someone locked/chained up in basement, then don't jump to conclusions as they might be there for a legitimate reason.  The odds of me ever having to apply this lesson are pretty slim but it's definitely something that I will keep in mind should I come across such a situation.  You know, for safety reasons.

Set in Columbia, The Damned follows a man/father, his second wife, the daughter from the first wife, and two other young persons.  After getting caught in a landslide they survive and come to an old inn.  The old man living there refuses them entry until he finds out the daughter is injured and her father is trying to get her help.  Once inside the inn some of the group find a young girl locked in the basement.  They let her out only to later discover that she is possessed by the spirit of a Bruja that was killed by old descendants from the village.  Everyone is fucked.

I want to like this movie more than I do.  I thought that the spirit's backstory was flushed out well enough.  The the spirit could never "die" because if you killed the body hosting it then the spirit jumped to your body.  This is only a step above Horror 101 but I can look past this because of how well it fit the film.  There are some good practical effects present here as well, like the woman cutting her face with the knife or the hands in the fake stomach.

On the flip side, The Damned took a page from the "shit I'm tired of seeing done poorly in horror" book by letting a majority of this film exist in a blue-grey tonality.  Yes, it's raining.  Yes, this film is spooky.  You can do these things for atmosphere but when you're not offering me anything as a visual juxtaposition it just makes me feel bored.  These are colors we associate with sadness and melancholy more than we associate them with horror.  Even the blood in this film was incredibly dark in color.  So I ask myself, would I watch this again?  Nah.  I've got better things to do.  Like lock people up in my basement...

I give The Damned 1 copy of The Damned's s/t album out of 5:

The Black Room (2017) 1h 31m

There had to have been some house, empty since the mid-80's, that was getting renovated and they found this script hidden in the floorboards.  The only catch is that it was written by some 14 year old boy that was sexually repressed and this was the closest he would ever get to woods porn.  Then this cursed script found its way to a director who adjusted himself and decided to make it come to life!

The Black Room has a traditional horror premise: house has a demon in it, new couple moves in, demon attempts to use them for his evil purpose.  The difference here is that the demon is hyper-sexual in order to create a human/demon hybrid child.  So think Amityville Horror meets Species.  You know, two films you never thought you'd hear compared in the same sentence.

I feel like this would be one of those VHS tapes I would see for rent as a kid and the cover would scare the shit out of me. It looks so 1984 horror.  The entire film had that vibe, just under a modern lens.  The old school rotoscoped lightning effects existed with modern practical effects and make-up for a good blend.  I will say that The Black Room had a few sloppy moments with such things as showing a full hand after the fingers just got cut off or, and this is more of a personal gripe, a brand new GBH patch on the goth/occult girl's bag.  Seriously, she's not listening to GBH.  Fuck, I'm not sure anyone still listens to GBH and that includes people that were in that fucking band.

There are also unexplained elements that aren't important to the story but still confusing.  Did this couple buy the house fully furnished and just moved in?  Are they not creeped out by that?  Who has a giant Tibetan Buddha statue when you walk into your house?  Why would you not cement over that door in the first place?  Scorpion tail dicks?!

I give The Black Room 2.5 Mortal Kombat Scorpions out of 5:

Don't Kill It (2016) 1h 23m

I really like Dolph Lundgren as an actor.  I don't think he's one of the best actors in the world, but he has done a great combination of iconic and really fun roles.  Frank Castle in the original Punisher movie, Ivan Drago in the Rocky Films, the street preacher in Johnny Mnemonic, all favorites of mine.

Don't Kill It is a really good take on demonic possession films.  The demon jumps from host to host when someone kills the possessed.  The killer then becomes the then new vessel for the demon.  It gets explained that this is a specific type of demon and that others move through humans in different ways.  After a deer hunter happens across a container that once held the demon, a small town in Mississippi is plagued with a string of murders.  Jebediah Woodley (Dolph Lundgren) is a demon hunter that catches wind of the killings and sets out to contain the presence.

If I had to describe this film in a single word, then it would be "fun."  It's completely aware of what it is and doesn't try to make any kind of award winning cinema.  Instead it's an entertaining horror movie with strong comedic elements, some decent lore (which does have one thing I wish become expanded upon more), an excellent use of practical effects with some CGI, and probably the best delivery of a "what the fuck?" I have ever heard.  In all honesty, I would be okay of Jebediah would return for a series of demon hunting films, so long as they stay with this quality.

I give Don't Kill It a solid 3 net guns out of 5:

Day 10: The Nightmare (2015) 1h 31m

Full disclosure:  In the course of my adult life I have had three events of sleep paralysis.  All three happened while I lived in the same apartment in Pittsburgh, PA.  Aside from those three, I have never had any other cases of sleep paralysis that I can recall.  Why am I disclosing this?  Because while the title and this poster make you think that The Nightmare could be a horror film (and despite being in the "horror" listing), it's actually a documentary about sleep paralysis and other individuals that have had experiences with it.  The disclosure is so you know that when I comment, I'm not just offhandedly making a comment with no background in the subject matter.

So despite my initial disappointment with this not being a real horror film, The Nightmare let us hear stories from people all over the world in regards to their experiences with sleep paralysis and what they saw, heard, and felt, not only through their own words but also through decent dramatizations.  What was interesting here was that when we're being presented these stories each one seems to build off of the previous in some way.  The only exception to this being that guy that was getting tickled by aliens.  I don't know what the hell was going on with that one.

Looking at this analytically, the commonalities between these create the question: why do these similar scenarios exist?  To talk about my own experience, only once did I ever feel a physical presence.  The other two times where one that I knew something was either there or around but I couldn't feel it, and the second was more along the lines of the symptoms of the "old hag" you read about in association with cases of sleep paralysis.  In this film there's the talk of shadow men, one of which may be wearing a hat, one that might have been an incubus, and the dumb tickle aliens.  Seriously, fuck the tickle alien thing.  Although he did make an awesome Halloween mask based on them.

I can't really give this a review as it's not a horror movie really.  Sure, things that happen in real life that can't be explained easily are scary as hell.  Some people view these experiences as an attempt at demonic possession, or UFO encounters, or just a state of sleep in which you feel you're awake but aren't and thus can't control your body despite your consciousness telling you that you should be able to.  I know this goes in the opposite direction of the rest of this blog, and fucking runs that way, but I'm going to attempt to wrap this up.

Since I'm not rating this film I will say to watch it if you have an interest in the experience of sleep paralysis.  While you do so, take it with a grain of salt.

Fuckin' tickle aliens, man...

Day 27: The Chosen (2015): 1h 28m

There are a lot of really weird and cool things that come out of Abrahamic religions.  One of the most common you come across is Lilith, the first wife of Adam.  She was made of the same clay as Adam and was a much more independent individual.  The story goes that Lilith turned down Adam's sexual advances.  Adam, jilted and angry, turned to God and complained that Lilith would not do what he wanted.  God cast Lilith out of the garden and cursed her barren.  God then took the rib from Adam and created Eve.  The rib was used this time because it was a part of Adam and thus Adam would have a better control of Eve.  From here Lilith's story gets random.  To some, she becomes a vampire and feeds on or kills infants.  She also becomes Fraser's wife.  In this film she makes a pact with Lucifer and possesses children.  If a blood relative doesn't draw a blood sigil on six other blood relatives for Eve to take in the child's place.

And that's the plot of 2015's The Chosen.  An early 20's something uncle spends his time trying to save his niece from Lilith.  Luckily he has two elderly people living in the house, a bitch of an aunt that shows up, his mom (who confesses that she killed the young girl's twin brother three years ago), and a drunken asshole of an uncle living in the house.  That's only five you say.  C'mon, you know who the 6th person ends up being...

This film was slow as hell.  Even when there was action it felt like it was slow.  A ghost nun that wrote the weird book on Lilith our main guy ends up with shows up a few times and is kind of cool.  Otherwise, this movie was a good plot but a boring execution.  The Chosen was only rated PG, and that was its nail in the coffin.  If it were a solid R they could've made this pretty awesome.  I mean, the fact I spit out a bunch of esoteric knowledge on Lilith and that's longer than my review portion of this film should mean a lot.

I give The Chosen 1 Lilith statue 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:

Day 28: Bad Milo! (2013) 1h 25min

Ken Marino, Patrick Warburton, Kumail Nanjiani, Stephen Root, and the guy that played "Karl Hungus" from the Big Lebowski come together in this horror-comedy film.  You know if Karl Hungus is in it then it's probably going to be okay.  That's about it, okay.  Not great, not bad, but somewhere in between, where I don't mind the fact I watched it, but I probably won't watch it again.  Although I might suggest it to people if they like The State, or any of those people, or fart/poop jokes, or ever wanted to see Ken Marino screaming on a toilet a lot.  Different strokes for different folks...

The overall plot of Bad Milo! is that Ken Marino has been having issues with stress that have caused him stomach issues.  The stomach issues end up being some sort of demon creature (which has the best fake Mayan illustration) which will escape Ken's ass to kill the person that was causing him the stress and then return to his ass cavern.  The attacks get chalked up to "rabid raccoon attacks."

Ken eventually develops a friendly relationship with Milo to attempt to keep him from killing certain people but toward the end it all goes to fuck.  I'm not going to go into the details of it because this is one of those films that you might want to watch, at least once, just to see it.

Bad Milo! isn't overly funny.  It's mostly poop and fart jokes mixed in with awkward self esteem jokes and annoying family issues.  There is a part where multiple dildos are used as throwing weapons, but I'm leaving it like that.

I give Bad Milo! 2.5 fake dog poops out of 5: