Day 29: Exeter (2015) 1h 31m

An excellent day for an exorcism... except an exorcism here won't really help and they don't know how to do one properly anyway.  They try.  Believe me, they try to do an exorcism.  It devolves into splashing holy water and saying "the power of Christ compels you!" pretty quick.  If they knew anything about doing a proper exorcism then they would know you need to make the demon or entity tell you its name.  This helps in gaining power over it... not that I'm speaking from experience or anything... Hey, look!  Another paragraph!

Shitty exorcism (which may be my new metal band name) aside, Exeter takes place in what used to be one of those horrible state hospitals for children living with various disabilities.  After countless human rights violations it was shut down and now they want to turn it into something that I forget.  It was church related, but only exists as a plot device as to why Patrick knew of the location since he was helping to fix it up.  What is meant to be a small group of friends turns into a huge party and suddenly Patrick's younger brother is showing signs of possession.  Then everyone is locked in.  It's on!

About 10 minutes in I thought this film was going to be a bore.  However, once the possession happens Exeter held my interest and some of the gore got me really excited.  Wait... that sounds wrong... fuck it.  NO WAIT!

In all seriousness, Exeter was great.  The story turns in ways I didn't expect and the twist at the ending caught me off guard.  Very rarely do I completely lose consciousness of an entire piece of the puzzle, but Exeter had so much going on it redirected my focus and made the finale that much stronger.  I do have two complaints though.  The first one the overuse of panther sound effects for the possessed, and the second is the misuse of the term "Wiccan" for what really should have been "Witchcraft."  Wiccan doesn't really fit what's going on with this film.

I give Exeter 3 statues of St. Bernard getting ready to choke slam someone out of 5:

Day 26: Bloody April Fools (Los Inocentes) (2013) 1h 5m

The issue you sometimes face with a film from another country is that some things will get lost in translation.  For example, Los Inocentes translates to "the innocents," not Bloody April Fools.  What also doesn't translate well is that while the North American "fool's day" happens to be April 1st, Spain's (which is where this film is from) takes place on December 28th.  So this leads to my big "what the fuck" moment of why is the U.S. release of this film called this?

Bloody April Fools starts off as any good slasher would: the quiet nerdy boy is accidentally murdered during a prank by some jock assholes at a hostel.  On the anniversary of his death (Fool's Day/December 28th) people at this hostel would end up murdered.  The hostel is then closed and said to be cursed.  Enter our group of late teen/early 20-somethings that are lost and decide to stay at the abandoned hostel despite some warnings from the locals.  Much blood and death ensue as well as some Jean-Ralphio looking asshole playing dumb pranks until his death.

Overall, Bloody April Fools did nothing new or original.  While I was having a bit of issue figuring out who the killer was, by the end of the film I realized they were just placing the original Friday the 13th in a hostel instead of a summer camp.  The actors were all on point but their characters were the standard tropes (minus a token) and, even the ones we are supposed to cheer for, I couldn't be bothered to give a fuck about.  The ending makes sense for the Spanish title at least.  I'm still kind of pissed this movie is called Bloody April Fools here.  Also, as another point of griping, I'm pretty sure that nail gun needed to be hooked up to a compressor and is not just a "I'm going to walk around with this shit and shoot 10" nails" type.

I give Bloody April Fools (Los Inocentes) 0 pictures of people enjoying a hostel responsibly out of 5:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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