House on Willow Street (2016) 1h 30m

There have been a few times that I've brought up my exhaustion for possessed teenage girls on here.  Partially because it's been done to death, partially because I'm one of those assholes that will bring up the fact that The Exorcist was based off of a boy that was possessed but they changed it for the film.  I address the latter because I point my finger solely at at Regan for why we have so many demonic ladies.  Now, the question is, does this film do anything new?

House on Willow Street has four individuals that are planning a kidnapping and ransom of the daughter of a diamond store owner.  This group has to be the most textbook looking criminal group ever.  If you asked a child to draw a group of bad people then it would probably look like this cast.  They spend six-weeks plotting and despite one of their characters being the harbinger of "you can't plan for everything," they finally make their move.  The house is unlocked, no power, and strange magick symbols are carved in the back of an armoire.  Kidnapping ensues and each of our group begins to have hallucinations of people that they are grieving.  After returning to the house to find the parents as well as two priests dead a few of the kidnappers find a tape explaining what happened and what they're up against.  They then spend the next hour ignoring the primary instruction of what they should do to get rid of the demon.

I'm on the fence with House on Willow Street.  It's not bad, but it didn't wow me.  There are some great jump scares in here with the use of the dead individuals and the demon takes control of other people via an intense french kiss, but it didn't help the lackluster plot.  The criminals each get a backstory which never really gets expanded on enough.  Especially when it comes to the surviving girl because we get a whole thing where her dead loved one actually helps her out but I don't know why.  I assume it's because they died accidentally and had a good relationship with them but that's me writing some sort of expanded fanfic universe for this film and I really don't need that in my life... just like I don't need any more possessed teenage girls.  Fucking enough already!

I give House on Willow Street 2.5 bad 3D rendered demons out of 5:

Intruder (2016) 1h 35m

T.S. Elliot wrote "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."  I find this quote fitting since today's film is number 30 and rounds out our 5th Cut.  Rather than going out with a bang we were stuck with another crawl and failed (at least to me) attempt at suspense.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Intruder is set in Portland, Oregon and takes place mostly in a woman's apartment.  She's a cellist for the Portland Philharmonic Orchestra.  This is a plot point that really only exists so she can interact with Moby who has a role in this film as a huge fucking asshole.  He's still Moby despite playing someone else and him using the word "fuck" or any variation of just feels awkward.  Our leading woman spends most of her time oblivious to the fact that there is someone in her apartment almost constantly.  The fact that she's watching a friend's cat and the cat does nothing to give this dude away is also really frustrating because it seems like the kind of cat that would want all the cuddles from everyone.  Also, as far as I know, the cat lives past the ending.  The true hero of the film!

This is meant to be an attempt at psychological horror.  I found myself assuming that the man was not real and that this was probably something to do with her.  Every male character we meet is suspect except for her boyfriend because he gets killed and left under the bed.  Which, as a follow up thought, for a stab wound there was no blood, and he was under there for longer than a day which means that the body should have evacuated the bowels and the internal gases should have caused bloating.  On top of that, there was no marbling of the skin or pooling of the blood in the veins due to gravity and no heart function to pump the blood.  That corpse was still as pretty as when he got stabbed.  Fuck that!

I get what they wanted to do, but it didn't have the suspense.  She never truly suspected so why even bother with a build up if you're not going to heighten tension through the characters on screen?  Seriously, even her smelling a fart from the guy and looking around would've been more interesting than just her going about with blinders on.

I give Intruder 1 picture of the band Masked Intruder out of 5:

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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 30: Contracted: Phase II (2015) 1h 18m

It's really challenging to find any kind of zombie film these days that isn't beating a dead plot horse.  In fact, even if you've never seen a zombie film, odds are that the increase in the phenomena surrounding zombie films means you could list off the primary identifiers.  While most people spend their time arguing over Dawn of the Dead fast or Night of the Living Dead shambling, I just want something different.  Contracted: Phase II delivered.

The sequel to 2013's Contracted, Phase II follows our main character Riley.  After the zombification and death (re-death?) of his friend Alice he begins to see signs of the zombie virus in himself.  The big difference with the virus in this case as compared to most other zombie films is that it is transmitted via intimate contact.  This can be anything from a kiss up to and including sexual intercourse.  In fact, we get one of the grossest scenes I've ever seen where Riley is having a flashback to having sex with Alice (still human) and I guess he pulls out and a ton of maggots just fall onto the floor.  The process doesn't kick in after death, here it is a slow build up of the body breaking down and decomposing while the person is still alive.  This leads to some amazing make-up.

I could really gush all over this review about the make-up.  Huge worms coming out of infected wounds, a nose bleed that is literally a deluge of blood, the grossest puss color and consistency I've ever seen, infected pustules that shift their fluid and tension as Riley moves, and an arm scratching moment that made me want to hide my eyes.  I'm not squeamish when it comes to horror.  Most of the time I can watch blood and dismemberment without issue.  But if you make it just real enough that I can actually imagine it happening to me, then you fucking win the prize.

The bulk of Contracted: Phase II is Riley attempting to deal with what is happening to him, but then him trying to track down the man that is the cause of it.  A mixture of Patient Zero and Typhoid Mary, this man passed on the virus when he sexually assaulted Alice, but never becomes a zombie himself.

I need to watch the first film to get the back story.  That's not to say that I didn't gather an understanding by watching this film by itself.  Either way, give these films a shot.  This one was rather short compared to most movies and it was paced well.  If nothing else, watch it for the great make-up effects.

I give Contracted: Phase II 3 condom bananas out of 5: