Residue (2017) 1h 22m

There's so much going on in that poster.  Just take a second and really look at it.  You have some demon thing, a bug woman, Max Headroom, the Smoking Man from X-files, and some strange lighting from the late 70's early 80's.  This poster looks like Pagemaster on PCP.  In a way, this film kind of was.

Residue focuses around a journal of partially unknown origins.  Being that it's a journal you have some info but the book itself is a descent into madness.  After a theft and botched hand-off of a "package" our main character comes home to find out he was delivering this book.  He makes the mistake of starting to read it and only after someone completes reading the book does the supernatural shit around them end.  By "around them" I'm talking the entire apartment complex and people living in it.   It is rare that someone lives to finish the book.  The actual "residue" the film gets its title from is a black slime that exists on and in some of the journal.

I don't know how I feel about Residue.  It attempts to do a Neo-Noir style thing with the character narration combined with some advanced tech but then leans more into a serious version of John Dies at the End.  The latter of these two should not be attempted in a serious manner because the humor is what makes that a good film.  There were some background moments you had to catch at the right time or you would miss them and I love when films do that well.  I don't have any legitimate complaints other than the supernatural elements became a bit too disjunct from the journal and what we knew of it, but I'm still not totally sold on it.

I give Residue a 2 Journal 3's out of 5:

Beyond the Gates (2016) 1h 24m

Netflix was broken for some reason and only loaded 27 movies when I looked up the horror section.  This sucks because I rolled 113 as far as what film to watch.  Being the resourceful person I deny being but really am, I chose one that looked the most 80's: Beyond the Gates.

Are you old enough to remember VHS board games?  Ones like Atmosfear/Nightmare?  If you weren't then what it consisted of was a board, pieces, and a VHS movie you interacted with while playing.  I own Nightmare, and thanks to a friend burning the VHS to a DVD for me I've played it dozens of times.  I also have the sequel but haven't played it out of laziness.  A majority of the time is just rolling the dice and moving your piece while collecting things, but every so often you would get screamed at by some old guy in shitty make-up about calling him "Gatekeeper" or being banished to the black hole.  You know, stuff you pay people on the internet to do now.

So why am I bringing up weird nostalgia you don't care about?  Beyond the Gates is a horror film based around a VHS game with the same name.  After their father goes missing for months, two brothers are left with emptying and closing down the family video store.  They end up finding the game in the locked office and the tape in the VCR.  The brothers watch the start of the tape but then bring it home to show one of the brother's girlfriend-wife-person-thing.  The woman on the tape tells them that the only way to save their dad's soul is to play the game.  So the game ensues...

This was a fucking rad movie.  I still had 15 minutes left and I was already on Amazon buying the blu-ray of it.  It has its b-movie moments but I feel like they knew what they were making.  Nods to the 80's, including some sweet synth score work, combined with a well thought out plot and some great gore and kills.... fucking stellar.  Also, I didn't realize this while choosing it, but the cast has some clout (at least to me).  One of the brothers is Chase Williamson who plays Dave in John Dies at the End, David Bruckner who directed V/H/S and Southbound has an appearance, and Jesse Merlin who does the voice of Fang in Street Fighter V (okay, less horror, more geek related) has a small roll.

I give Beyond the Gates 5 mac n' cheese spiral boxes out of 5 (because I ate too much of it while watching this:

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Deathgasm (2015) 1h 26m

Can I just give this a 5 right now?  Seriously, this hit on all my favorite things as far as a horror-comedy.  It's fucking called Deathgasm for Lucifer's sake!

Take one part Evil Dead 2, one part John Dies at the End, and throw in every heavy metal album cover ever and you have Deathgasm.  After finding out there's an old metal musician in hiding in their town, Brodie and Zakk end up with a copy of "The Black Hymn."  Their shitty metal band (named Deathgasm) play the song and suddenly the town becomes possessed.

I haven't laughed out loud (on purpose) at a good horror-comedy in a while and this one had me rolling on the couch.  It's such a great combination of juvenile humor mixed with metal references, corpse paint, cheesy blood and gore, and even a Sub-Zero fatality at one point.  Also boobs... what's a metal movie without boobs?  Have you even seen Heavy Metal?

Fucking 5 pictures of Gaahl out of 5!!!!:

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Day 16: Burying the Ex (2014) 1h 29m

Keeping the horror/comedy train rolling is 2014's Burying the Ex.  While I can't place my finger on it, this film reminded me a lot of John Dies at the End.  I thought it could be something like they shared a director, but that's not the case.  In fact, the only thing Burying the Ex's director did that I care about is five episodes of the TV show Eerie Indiana back in the day.  I hope they have that on Netflix.  I'll binge watch the shit out of that tomorrow if they do!

Burying the Ex has a plot on par with pre-Comic Code horror comics.  Evelyn, the girlfriend of our main character Max, makes a promise to love Max forever while standing next to some Satan Genie thing which apparently has real magical powers.  Evelyn gets hit by a bus and dies but returns from the grave to be an even crazier person than she was in real life.  In the meantime, Max was going to break up with her when she got hit by the bus and has since moved on to a much cooler girl that makes ice cream with horror themed names.  She made a Fruit Brute ice cream for satan's sake!  Who wouldn't love a girl like that?!  Well, I guess gay men.  That's the obvious answer there.

You can kind of guess what's going to happen during this with an undead ex and a new cooler girlfriend.  Over all I really liked this film.  I even recommended it to my fiancé because I figured he'd like it too.  I recommend it to you too if you like horror/comedy movies.

I give Burying the Ex 3 IDKWTF this stockphoto is out of 5: