Death Note (2017) 1h 41m

I knew this day would come.  I fucking knew it!  I just hoped that it would be much later than this, and on Halloween of all days!  So I've read all of the original Death Note manga, saw all of the anime, and own two of the three Japanese films (Death Note and Death Note II, but not L Saved the World).  When Netflix said they were going to make their own movie based on Death Note it was met with some excitement and some skepticism.  Then it came out and all I heard about it was that it was trash upon trash.  So how does this really measure up?

If you're unfamiliar with the premise, Death Note is about an ultra intelligent teenage boy named Light.  He finds a notebook labeled as a "Death Note" and a list of rules inside of how to use it.  The book itself belongs to a Shinigami (death god) named Ryuk who acts as an influencer and voyeur to Light's use of the Death Note.  After donning the name "Kira" (an indirect form of the word "killer" in Japanese), Light uses the Death Note in a self-conceived notion of global morality by eliminating criminals.  A special operative, another teenage boy of extreme intelligence, known only as L is put on the case to flush out Kira.

That pretty much sums up what is maybe the first quarter of the original story and more info than you're given for the entirety of this film.  If you know nothing at all about Death Note then you might like this film.  If you know even the slightest bit about Death Note then you know this is a bastardization of the source material set in America.  I could go on and on about why this wasn't good, but those reviews already exist so I'll jump to the two things I did like about this.  First, Ryuk (and more importantly Willem Dafoe's voice acting) was a shining star in the black void of this film.  The lines were dead on, the look was great, and Willen Dafoe fucking kills it with his laughs and line deliveries.  Second, this version of L was much more proactive than the original.  He took risks that were out of character for L, but it made him a bit more interesting.  It doesn't help that I'm not really a fan of L in the manga/anime and much prefer Near, but with this film you have no clue what I'm talking about.

So is this movie the turd sandwich people say it is?  Ehhhh... Like I said, if you have even flipped through the manga then you know this movie is trash.  Although, for people that have no clue about Death Note, maybe this will be their gateway into the real thing, or maybe it will be their intro to manga and anime.  So I can't really shit on that.  Kids still get into metal based on new Metallica albums.  If it leads to them finding good metal or visiting the old Metallica albums, then good for them.  Metal up your ass...

I give Death Note 1 apple out of 5 (in honor of Willem Dafoe's Ryuk):

Clinical (2017) 1h 44m

Netflix has entirely too much money.  Sometimes they put out great things, and sometimes they put out trash.  Sense 8, great.  Castlevania, great-levania.  However, having a shit ton of money burning a hole in your pocket means that you'll take risks.  Much as how I plan on going to the toy store later and I just got paid.  If I'm not careful I'll end up wasting some of that money on trash instead of putting it toward something good.  This was one of those times where the money was probably doled out by being drunk and making it rain only to realize later Netflix needed to pay rent or some shit.

Clinical is a mash-up of time jumps.  We start with a psychiatrist finding a female patient in her office with bloody hands and a shard of glass.  After attacking the psychiatrist the girl then cuts her own throat.  We find out later she survived.  How?  Well, this is the one thing I liked about this film and one of the weird things I picked up in random research.  When a person cuts their own throat they never complete the cut, you get about midway before the body enters shock and you pass out.  They stuck true to this and I applaud them for that.

Moving forward, after therapy of her own, our psychiatrist reopens her practice but avoids dealing with trauma cases because that's what her last patient was.  Eventually she gets a call from a man named Alex that says he was told she would be the only person to help him with his trauma.  She concedes and begins treating him.  He had a face transplant and his story was that there was a car accident he stopped to help and this lead to a mess of shit where his face got all kinds of jacked up.  That's a lie, he's actual the previous girl's father who was a fucking sick ass pervert and that was the girls trauma.  We'll leave it at that.

The girl begins showing up and you think it's either a ghost, flashbacks, or dream sequences but it ends up that she was released from the mental hospital she was kept in and just began fucking with the psychiatrist.  Lots of shit happens and it all leads to our protagonist pulling off the entire face transplant in one big ol' face pancake.  This makes no sense since it was a transplant from like a year ago and would have healed, but fuck science!  They spent it all on throat cutting research.

This review is way too long but there was a lot going on that was too confusing with establishing if it was past, present, or a dream.  I assumed that Alex was the girl's father early on and then they tipped their hand waaaay earlier than the reveal.  The acting and general cinematography were good but the directing and editing were kind of a wet fart.

I give Clinical 1 computer rendered clinic out of 5:

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Friday's Choice Cuts: Castlevania (2017: Netflix)

I've been a fan of Castlevania since I was a wee child.  In fact, from where I'm sitting right now, I can see my NES cartridges of Castlevania and Castlevania II, as well as my wall scroll of the box art of Castlevania hanging on my wall.  I've used this blog before to mention horror related video game things, but this time we get to talk about the animated series of Castlevania that Netflix has put out.

Spanning only four episodes (because they didn't want to take a risk on it and fail horribly), a majority of this "season" is mostly to establish plot and characters.  If you've ever played Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse for the NES then you're no stranger to most of the general things.  Trevor Belmont is your Belmont for this (although, I'm always partial to Simon), and along the way he picks up Sypha and the season ends with them acquiring Alucard to their party.  I don't think I've seen any signs of Grant Danasty yet, so they might just leave him out.

The setting is Wallachia, an area cursed by Dracula where, after returning from his travels, he finds the Church (capital C there) has burned his wife at the stake for witchcraft.  She was a woman of science and a healer but fear and superstition lead to her death.  After  giving the people one year to make their peace before the curse arrives, they instead ignore it with the thought the Church will protect them.  They're wrong and blood and gore ensue.  There were no tiny hunchbacks jumping around or floating Medusa heads...  I better see that shit!!

All in all, it's not 100% what I wanted, but it's still in the high 80%-ish range.  The writing is great thanks in part to Warren Ellis (whom I know for because of the Transmetropolitan comics).  It does a good job of bring the game into an action scenario.  Trevor uses a short sword, a whip, daggers, and at one points has holy water become a weapon.  The whip animation is awesome and there are parts where he does things like disarming someone by whipping off their finger or taking out their eye.  Which leads me to the next part, gore.  They seem to know the perfect ratio of having it look awesome but don't let it become overkill for shock's sake.

It's been picked up for a second season which is supposed to be twice as long so I'm looking forward to seeing where they're going with it.  As I mentioned earlier, four episodes of establishing why your characters get together was a long time to spend on that and it did leave me unfulfilled by the end of this season.

Plus... the only other thing we've ever really had was Simon Belmont on Captain N. *shudders*

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 6: Splatter (2009) 29m

I feel like Netflix was fucking with me on this one.  When I saw a 29 minute running time and Corey Feldman's face I assumed this was some sort of short film.  Nothing against Mr. Feldman, as he has been in many movies I like, but he hasn't been horror relevant since the first Lost Boys film (and this includes the late addition sequels they made where he did a reprise of his Edgar Frog role).

Splatter was a web series created for Netflix.  It was meant to be an interactive show where the next person killed would be chosen by the viewers.  I assume that what I watched was either the pilot or maybe the first episode as almost everyone was killed during it.

It starts with Corey Feldman's character Johnny Splatter committing suicide on camera after spouting a fake vodou spell.  Five people from his career then show up for his wake (I'm not sure what it is, maybe a shitty funeral at night).  These people are his two former band mates, his manager, his producer, and a groupie.  The whole thing is filmed at what I'm pretty sure was the castle house from a season of Flavor of Love.  A video of the suicide shows up but then runs in reverse to where Corey Feldman is telling them his will.

I don't get the video segments.  We see Corey in person and he's a zombie but on the videos he's normal and the videos correspond in relation to events and deaths that happen just seconds before.  So I have no clue what the time logic is here or if he just had his revenge planned this tightly.

After the first death our cast finds a journal in the empty coffin.  It's written entirely in a different language, but don't worry!  The groupie spent time in an African country and she "picks up dialects quickly," so she can read it.  Yes, the logic is that she can pick up spoken languages quickly and can therefore read this journal.  Fuck this character.  She should have died first... preferably on the way to the wake/funeral.

The journal contains a ritual to stop Johnny; body parts from those murdered, collected and burned while an incantation is done.  Come the end there is only one person still alive is, Johnny's manager.  Bee tee dubbs, his fucking manager is CANDYMAN!  Of course not in the role of Candyman, but still the same actor.  He starts the ritual but rather than finishing it he and Johnny make a deal to do a comeback tour.  As a fuckin' nasty zombie, Johnny Splatter reunion tour.  Also Johnny brings his murdered bassist back to life because he needs a bassist.

You know, I kind of thought this was goofy fun when I watched it, but recounting this pilot (or whatever) has made me kind of angry at it.  Also, there were no other episodes of it on Netflix which is what confused me to begin with.  IMDB says there were 10 episodes but apparently only three aired.  They probably got pissed like me after telling someone about it and realized it wasn't as good as they initially thought.

I give Splatter 2 sweet Frog Brothers shirt designs out of 5:

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:

Day 29: Scary Movie 3 (2003) 1h 24m

I wish I could hate this.  I wish I could sit here and say that this film was absolute shit and not good as a horror comedy.  In truth, I definitely laughed at parts of this movie.  Not all of it mind you, but some parts of it.

Scary Movie 3 is the center point of the Scary Movie franchise.  If you're not familiar with it, Scary Movie takes popular horror and non-horror films and spoofs them in a single movie.  This one takes 8 Mile and The Matrix and fits them in with a combined plot of Signs and The Ring.  The only actors I even cared about were Queen Latifah and Leslie Nielson (a true Canadian treasure!) and I didn't even realize one of the people was Simon Rex (probably because he wasn't naked or introducing a video).

There's not much to talk about here.  You either like these or hate them.  It's the same humor you'd find in a middle school locker room: farts, homophobia, sex humor, misogyny, and add in gratuitous breasts.  Unfortunately, as I said, it still made me laugh.  I'm apparently a terrible person. *sad face*

I give Scary Movie 3 2 censored Simon Rex porn movie boxes out of 5:

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 26: House of Good and Evil (2013) 1h 48m

There's an old Alka-Seltzer commercial where a guy said "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." I can't believe I watched this whole movie, and no fizzy tablet water will make this feeling go away.

House of Good and Evil revolves around Maggie and Chris, a dysfunctional couple that lost their baby when Chris pushed Maggie. Chris is a fucking scum bag in this film, don't let him fool you. After the loss of their child they move to a duplex in the deep country. Why this house was turned into a duplex, I have no clue because that would mean that two families want to live in the middle of fuck all. Also, Duplex of Good and Evil doesn't sound as scary as House of Good and Evil.

There's a second bedroom with a black door that is locked up and Maggie keeps hearing the a phone coming from the room despite there not being any phone lines. There are also other weird noises and things she keeps experiencing but Chris doesn't believe her. She eventually breaks into the other side of the duplex to meet her elderly reclusive female neighbor. After realizing the neighbor reminds her of herself, she fleas. This parallel between the neighbors and Maggie and her husband exist a lot, including the violent and abusive male.

This all culminates in the neighbor woman telling Maggie a story about how she finally stood up to her husband and after a self "baptism" in a creek, Maggie returns full of self-worth and a "fuck you" attitude. She calls Chris on his shit and threaten hims with an axe. The neighbor guy comes out, says terrible misogynistic things, and kills Chris. Maggie kills that guy and then kills the old woman. The property manager comes after and finds Maggie in bed with her dead husband. It turns out that Maggie apparently poisoned her husband the night they first moved in and everything after that was all a hallucination. All of Maggie's interactions with the neighbors were fake as well because two perfectly well adjusted individuals drive up while the police are taping things off and say they're the neighbors and have been in Florida.

I can't say I didn't see this coming. All in all, this is a plot that has been done before and done at a much better pace in much shorter films. House of Good and Evil would have been better titled as "Turd Duplex" so I knew what I was getting into.

I give House of Good and Evil 0 popsicle stick houses out of 5:

Day 25: Final Girl (2015) 1h 30m

I get the feeling that someone watched A Clockwork Orange, decided they wanted to make some bastardized update of it, and then have Alex and his droogs lose and die while out for a bit of the ol' ultraviolence.  I wish I could kick them in the yarbles for that...


In truth, Final Girl was a pretty okay film.  It wasn't a horror movie at all though, definitely more along the thriller lines with some slight horror elements.  Our primary characters are Wes Bentley (American Beauty/the Hunger Games) and Abigail Breslin.  Abigail you may remember as Little Rock from the 2009 film Zombieland, or as the little girl with glasses that dances to "Super Freak" in Little Miss Sunshine.  After finding that tidbit out I can no longer pull parts of this film up in my mind without thinking about that.

Apparently Abigail's parents were killed and she ended up in Wes' care.  Wes then trains her to be some sort of weird spy without the actual spying but all of the cool subterfuge and killing abilities.  He does so because he says that someone killed his wife and child and I think he was trying to find them.  I'm not sure, it really had nothing to do with the plot aside from bringing them together and then was abandoned.

Her first real solo mission is to kill this group of four guys that have been taking girls out into the woods and "hunting" them.  A majority of these scenes seemed like something that would be in a The Killers video.  It's her with blond hair and a red dress in the dark woods while four guys in tuxedos try to find her.  The fact that she dosed three of the guys with DMT and they're having crazy hallucinations helps this idea too.  You could just see Brandon Flowers suddenly popping up and singing with that old timey villain mustache he has sometimes.  Just a girl trying to kill guys in tuxedos and then suddenly "SOMEBODY TOLD ME! THAT YOU HAD A BOYFRIEND!..."  The Killers are a pretty good band.  Much better than this film was.

I know that above I described this film as "pretty okay," and using that as a descriptor typically means that it was shit and I don't want to just don't want to say it.  This film had moxie though.  While it brought together a lot of things I like, it was middle of the road for me.  This isn't to say that if, in conversation, the discussion of films comes up that I might not recommend it, but it's a movie, I saw it, and it was it.

I give Final Girl 2 The Killers albums out of 5:

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: